Summer Jobs For At Risk Kids
The Washington Post December 8, 2014 published a story about the effects of a "Summer Jobs Program" in Chicago.
Research on the program conducted by the University of Chicago Crime Lab and just published in the journal Science suggests that these summer jobs have actually had such an effect: Students who were randomly assigned to participate in the program had 43 percent fewer violent-crime arrests over 16 months, compared to students in a control group.
The study indicates that violent crime by "at risk youth" was reduced by having a short term summer job. "Nothing stops a bullet like a job" may be a little too simple an explanation, but I think that jobs programs like this have their place in public policy.
One of the biggest problems with any jobs program is that they seem expensive when compared to doing nothing and critics of these kinds of programs believe they should deliver results that approximate perfection before being funded.
Projects to help individuals that would benefit are too small and the benefits of these programs get discarded because the programs are small not worth the effort and require overhead that make them even more expensive. The private sector can't provide jobs for all these kids. They have a difficult time providing grocery stores and other retail outlets that more affluent neighborhoods take for granted and while the term death spiral is also over used, more needs to be done to provide opportunity, jobs, and economic activity to poor areas where poor folks actually live.
Research on the program conducted by the University of Chicago Crime Lab and just published in the journal Science suggests that these summer jobs have actually had such an effect: Students who were randomly assigned to participate in the program had 43 percent fewer violent-crime arrests over 16 months, compared to students in a control group.
The study indicates that violent crime by "at risk youth" was reduced by having a short term summer job. "Nothing stops a bullet like a job" may be a little too simple an explanation, but I think that jobs programs like this have their place in public policy.
One of the biggest problems with any jobs program is that they seem expensive when compared to doing nothing and critics of these kinds of programs believe they should deliver results that approximate perfection before being funded.
Projects to help individuals that would benefit are too small and the benefits of these programs get discarded because the programs are small not worth the effort and require overhead that make them even more expensive. The private sector can't provide jobs for all these kids. They have a difficult time providing grocery stores and other retail outlets that more affluent neighborhoods take for granted and while the term death spiral is also over used, more needs to be done to provide opportunity, jobs, and economic activity to poor areas where poor folks actually live.
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