Truancy may not be the concern at the forefront of juvenile justice policy but a look into truancy courts and laws can reveal similar concerns to that of criminal juvenile policy. Although the legal definition of truancy varies by state, being truant is the act of missing school without valid excuse. In many states, truancy is an actual crime and can result in fines and court appearances for both children and parents, with penalties reaching as high as the loss of custody of children.
Truancy is often related to or used interchangeably with the term chronic absenteeism, which the U.S. Department of Education defines as a student who misses 15 or more days of school unexcused in a school year. According to their data, over 16% of elementary through high school aged students fell into this category for the 2015-2016 academic year. This number has skyrocketed to around 25% for the 2022-2023 school year and fluctuates across ethnicity and race. As the Department notes, “The very students who tend to face significant challenges and need the most educational supports are often missing the most school.” Missing school can have significant impacts, including falling behind in reading levels for elementary aged students and hindering students from graduating high school on time or at all.
Furthermore, studies have shown that chronic absenteeism, even from an early age, can be a predictor of later criminal involvement. The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention has been documenting this relationship since at least 1995, where they found high correlations between truant high schoolers and drug use as students who were caught skipping school often tested positive on drug tests. Other students were arrested for crimes such as shoplifting and vandalization when they were supposed to be in school.
Conversely, states with higher graduation rates tend to have lower crime rates. Research indicates that states with high college matriculation and a greater investment in public education had higher levels of public safety. This may be attributed to many factors: a more educated population is less likely to commit crimes and students who regularly attend school are less likely to commit juvenile offenses.
What are some of the causes of truancy? Since the pandemic, truancy has risen in most states and the impacts of school closures are still reverberating in terms of student attendance. Due to virtual learning and schools shutting down during the pandemic, both children and parents started seeing school as more optional and less value is placed on missing just one day of school. This manifests across all demographics with some families taking two week ski trips in the middle of the school year and other students taking time off to take care of younger sibilings. In addition to these lingering pandemic effects, mental health concerns such as anxiety, depression, bullying, and risky behaviors are all cited as reasons for skipping school, especially for teenagers.
To combat chronic absenteeism, 24 states and the District of Columbia treat truancy as a crime. Some of these states even detain truant youth and involve child welfare agencies in attempt to rectify truant behaviors after multiple offenses.
For example, in the Nashville Public School system in Tennessee, students can be referred to services after only four unexcused absences during a school year. The first intervention involves the school staff and meetings between counselors and parents. However, if attendance does not improve, the school principal can refer the family to juvenile court. Here, families are connected to social services that may assist them in attending school and can work with probation officers and social workers to address academic or other concerns. However, if families do not take advantage of the services, punitive measures, such as school expulsion, may be taken.
Other states adopt different tactics to try and improve school attendance. In 2012-2013, Maryland started incentivizing school attendance rather than punishing skipping, which reduced truancy by three percent. This program attempted to capitalize on the adolescent brain, which responds better to reward than to punishment. At the elementary school age, some districts are innovating how they deal with truancy by involving families more directly in their child’s education. The District of Columbia employed home visits from teachers while California schools wrote personalized letters home to parents of students struggling with attendance. Both strategies saw an increase in attendance for families who received the intervention compared to families who did not.
In lieu of ever-high chronic absenteeism rates after the pandemic, it is necessary to reinvest in truancy programming and ensure that children are going to school and staying in school. While punitive measures aim to prevent truancy from turning into larger criminal activity and parental involvement programs aim to strengthen family attachment to schools, a combination of supports may be needed to reduce absenteeism that involves students, families, schools, communities, districts, and for extreme cases, the juvenile justice system.