Is There More Violence Around Schools? Five Tests Across Nine Cities

Citation: Ashby, M (2026). Is There More Violence Around Schools? Five Tests Across Nine Cities. Law and Criminology Journal, 3(1) 213–262.

Published version (open access)

Research on violence around schools has produced inconsistent findings, partly because of methodological differences. This study advances the evidence using a novel open-data source.

Police-recorded assault and personal robbery data from nine large US cities were analyzed using fixed-effects models of daily census block-group crime counts to test five hypotheses. Results can be interpreted causally under reasonable assumptions.

Public secondary schools increased assault counts on school days but not on non-school weekdays, with larger effects for larger schools. Effects for elementary schools were weaker and less consistent. School days increased assaults during school-related hours but not during evenings or overnight, although effects varied across cities. No consistent relationships were found for personal robbery.

The findings are consistent with the routine activities approach and suggest that schools help shape the spatio-temporal distribution of neighborhood violence. Open data can facilitate multi-city research on crime and place.