Schools as places of crime? Evidence from closing chronically underperforming schools

We leverage the closing of chronically underperforming public schools in Philadelphia to estimate their impact on neighborhood crime. Employing a difference-in-differences strategy comparing monthly crime in blocks where school buildings closed to blocks where schools remained open or were never located, we find significant and substantive declines in crime following school closure. The decline in crime is driven by reductions in violent crime, is concentrated in blocks where high schools closed, during weekday hours when schools would have been in session, and is greatest in the blocks where more students exited following closures. While crime increased in blocks that enrolled a larger share of students displaced due to closures, the displacement of crime was significantly smaller in magnitude than the total crime reduction. These results suggest that closing schools with high rates of student misconduct and low educational performance led to a net reduction in crime in Philadelphia. •We leverage the closing of chronically underperforming public schools in Philadelphia to estimate their impact on neighborhood crime.•We employ a difference-in-differences strategy which compares monthly crime in blocks where school buildings closed to blocks where schools remained open or were never located.•We find significant and substantive declines in crime following school closure.•The decline in crime is driven by reductions in violent crime, is concentrated in blocks where high schools closed, during weekday hours when schools would have been in session and is greatest in the blocks where more students exited following closures.•While crime increased in blocks that enrolled a larger share of students displaced due to closures, the displacement of crime was significantly smaller in magnitude than the total crime reduction.•Closing schools with high rates of student misconduct and low educational performance led to a net reduction in crime in Philadelphia.