Education and Crime

Few criminological studies have attempted to estimate the effects of educational resources on individual delinquency and propensity for criminal behavior. One exception is Gary Gottfredson and Denise Gottfredson's Victimization in Schools (1985). The Gottfredsons argue that rates of student and teacher victimization in schools are a product of a range of school characteristics, including school resources, peer composition, and vocational curricular emphasis. Educational resources are likely important in that they can allow schools to reduce class size and thus increase a student's opportunities for learning from, and relating to, their teachers—that is, their likelihood of attachment to conventional activities. Educational resources can also be used to ensure greater monitoring of youth.

Educational resources likely affect a school's ability to influence positively an individual's life course, since schools with greater resources are better able to provide more positive enriched educational experiences for adolescents (such as costly vocational education programs). Recent noncriminological research has identified a clear pattern of the effects of educational resources on a range of socioeconomic outcomes including growth in test scores, increased years of educational attainment, and higher lifetime earnings. These socioeconomic outcomes have all been related to individual criminality and incarceration risk. It is therefore not surprising that high school student-teacher ratios have also been demonstrated to affect adult incarceration risk (Arum and Beattie).