Where Youth Find Their Partners in Crime

It is well known that crime clusters together, often in highly disadvantaged areas. Most is actually carried out in teams: People who commit crimes with one or more partners have 50 percent more arrests and are nearly 80 percent more likely to have been arrested for committing a violent crime. So what role does clustering play in finding partners to commit crimes?

That’s the question at the heart of a new study by a team of economists at Harvard, the University of Colorado, and the University of Connecticut. They developed a clever research strategy to better identify the relative role of geographic proximity in youth criminal partnerships. They posit that there are two main places where young people interact frequently and develop tight bonds: their school and their neighborhood.