Effects of Public School Closures on Crime: The Case of the 2013 Chicago Mass School Closure

Noli Brazil

Sociological Science April 28, 2020
10.15195/v7.a6


Public school closures are increasing in number and size in U.S. cities. In response, parents, teachers, and public school advocates argue that closures carry negative consequences for multiple institutions across a wide set of outcomes. One such institution is the local neighborhood, and a negative consequence that is frequently raised is increased crime. I test this claim by using the 2013 Chicago mass school closure as a case study. Rather than conceiving of a school closure as a binary event (closed or not closed) I break it out according to a school’s status after closure: vacant, repurposed, and merged with an existing school. I find that vacancy and repurposing into a nonschool are associated with decreased crime. In contrast, merging a closed school with an existing school is associated with increased crime. The vacancy and repurposing effects are spatiotemporally localized, concentrated in the 75-meter area surrounding the school and disappearing after a year, whereas the student merger effect persisted over time across larger spatial scales. My results suggest that the relationship between closure and neighborhood crime is not straightforward, varying by postclosure land use status and spatiotemporal factors.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Noli Brazil: Department of Human Ecology, University of California, Davis
E-mail: nbrazil@ucdavis.edu

Acknowledgements: I thank Luis Guarnizo, Andrew Papachristos, and Jenna Stearns for generously reading previous versions and providing invaluable feedback. I also thank Enrica Jiang for data collection and research assistance. Any remaining errors are mine alone.

  • Citation: Brazil, Noli. 2020. “Effects of Public School Closures on Crime: The Case of the 2013 Chicago Mass School Closure.” Sociological Science 7: 128-151.
  • Received: January 9, 2020
  • Accepted: February 22, 2020
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Olav Sorenson
  • DOI: 10.15195/v7.a6


, , ,

No reactions yet.

Write a Reaction


The reCAPTCHA verification period has expired. Please reload the page.

SiteLock