Teen driving curfews don't just lower crash rates - they can also cut crime rates.
New research from the University of Texas at Dallas revealed that restricting nighttime driving hours for teens corresponded with a 6 percent drop in crime among 16- to 17-year-olds.
"Being able to drive or having friends who can drive is the difference between going out and staying home on a Saturday night," said Monica Deza, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Texas at Dallas and lead researcher of the current study. "It seemed intuitive to us that having a curfew on driving hours affected the probability that teenagers would get themselves into trouble."
The study involved the FBI's Uniform Crime Report arrest data from 1995 to 2011. After comparing arrests of teens aged 16 and 17 to young adults aged 18 and older, researchers found that arrests of younger teens decreased by 4 to 6 percent after states enacted Graduated Driver Licensing rules that restrict new drivers from driving past a certain time.
Further analysis revealed that states that had the longest graduated license programs showed the greatest crime reductions, particularly in manslaughter, murder and larceny. Researchers found that arrests of teen aged 16 to 17 decreased by 11 percent for manslaughter or murder, 5 percent for larceny and 4 percent for aggravated assault.
"Graduated Driver Licensing (GDL) laws effectively impose a statutory driving curfew and a limitation on the number of passengers in motor vehicles. Both the timing of motor vehicle access and a limitation on the peer influences available in a motor vehicle could significantly affect the production of criminal behavior," researchers wrote in the study.
"These effects are larger in magnitude in states where the nighttime driving curfew is required for a longer period of time," they added.
Another interesting finding was that driving curfews were most effective at lowering crime rates when gas prices were low.
"We also show that GDL plays an important role in reducing crime in periods of low gasoline prices, a time when teen driver prevalence would otherwise have been high. These results suggest that there is another benefit to states for adopting GDL laws and provide insight into the production of teenage crime," researchers explained.
"As policymakers become concerned with how low gasoline prices affect risky behaviors among teens, they may want to take into account the role of graduated driving licensing in keeping teenagers off the streets, even in periods in which the cost of driving is particularly low," Deza concluded.
The findings are published in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management.
