Why summer heat brings an uptick in crime

For as long as public records of crime have been available, there has been a conventional wisdom that with the summertime comes an annual uptick in crime.

There are usually two key reasons people cite for this seeming phenomenon. The first is that when the weather is nice, people go outside, they drink, they congregate in large public areas and sometimes tempers flare and then violent crime—like assaults and homicide—tends to happen.

On the other hand, others attest, when the heat is on, people become more stressed and irritable, which makes them more likely to commit violent crimes. Still another factor to considered is that during the summer, young people, typically hormone-raged teens, fill the streets during hours when they would normally be in school.

“The biggest thing that happens in the summer is that teens are more unsupervised,” said Elin Waring, the chair of Lehman College’s sociology department said.

“Instead of being in school for six hours a day or more, they are off and on their own for big chunks of the day, and that’s pretty much explanation number one.”

She added most teens are not likely to commit major crimes, such as burglary.

“Those common crimes are the low-level crimes: vandalism, low-level theft, shoplifting or maybe they get into an argument with someone or maybe smoking some pot,” Ms. Waring said. “Yes, it all goes up. Violent crimes go up, too. The burglaries go up. Everything goes up.”

According to Justice Department statistics, 1,107 children under 13, and 4,597 children aged 14 and older were arrested in 2015. Fifty-seven percent of the arrests were for personal crimes, such as assault and robbery.

Ms. Waring says the phenomenon of youth crime in the summer is not limited to any specific demographic group, but “cuts across economic lines.”

“There is some research that says kids feel like parents know where they are after school, even if they are at work,” she said. “In the summer, we have a problem, which is there is no school to have an afterschool program. That’s why a summer job could be a great opportunity, a low-wage job or an internship, having something at the park, or letting them help be assistant counselors – all that stuff is good.”