Full day schooling crime reductions concentrate on school hours: evidence from São Paulo, Brazil

Augusto Alves, Bruno Pantaleão and Alei Santos

No 8a6t7_v1, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: We examine the mechanisms through which full-time schooling reduces crime, exploiting the staggered rollout of São Paulo’s Integral Education Program (2012 - 2024) using a difference-in-differences estimator. Full-time school adoption reduces property crime by 18.8 incidents per hexagon-year (7%), driven primarily by robbery. Crucially, effects are temporally concentrated: robbery falls 12.1% during school hours versus 8.8% outside them, and theft falls 25.8% during school hours while increasing 4.2% outside. This pattern provides direct evidence for an incapacitation mechanism—crime reduction is largest when school supervision is most direct. Underage-perpetrator crimes are reduced disproportionately (65% for theft, 23% for robbery), indicating school-based supervision particularly deters youth. Full-time schooling operates primarily through direct supervision rather than longer-run opportunity-cost mechanisms, a finding relevant for developing country policy

Date: 2026-07-23
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:8a6t7_v1

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/8a6t7_v1

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