Are safe routes effective? Assessing the effects of Chicago’s Safe Passage program on local crimes

Abstract

This study investigates whether Chicago’s Safe Passage anti-violence program has changed local crime. The program enhances the safety of students traveling to and from public school by monitoring designated routes. Longitudinal data for several school years and geographic level as fine as street segments are used to examine how the program affects several categories of crime in the safe routes and its closest neighbors during the day and at night. I find that the intervention decreases crime along high school safe routes while in effect. There is no evidence of temporal displacement. However, geographic spillovers do occur: the nearest neighbors of designated streets also see a drop in crime, while streets farther away experience a slight increase.