Truancy As A Symptom, Not An Offense?

Can our education system become an important first responder to early calls for help and signs of delinquency that might eventually trigger interaction with the juvenile justice system?  We know that the education system can be a feeder system through the practices and policies that make up the school-to-prison pipeline.  However, it’s an altogether different mindset to ask How can we design policies and practices so that our schools help make sure that young people don’t travel down a road to prison?

I hadn’t given this question any thought before reading the report on the Family Listening Sessions held in 2011 by Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and the Campaign for Youth Justice. Now I think it might be a powerful place for the YTFG to explore in more detail the possibilities of both increasing graduation rates and reducing incarceration. The insights from families and youth who have had direct experiences with the juvenile justice system offer insights into critical access points for prevention and/or intervention of risky behaviors that may lead to detention:

• Schools, school resource officers, and law enforcement should consider truancy a symptom of youth heading for trouble rather than an enforceable offense. During the listening session with tribal families, for example, many youth described episodes of dealing with discrimination and bullying in school as reasons for their truancy. 

• Youth in elementary and middle school consistently exhibited early warning signs of at-risk behaviors before their first detention. Behaviors included truancy, a drop in grades, and evidence of mental health issues. Families believe that the school system is a critical access point for teachers, school counselors, and school resource officers to intervene, which schools can and should better support and encourage. 

• School systems should recognize mental health disorders in youth (e.g., depression, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, bipolar disorder, and general anxiety disorder) as treatable medical issues that are often the root cause of impulsive behaviors that lead to trouble. Stronger support systems in and outside of the school system that respond to these behaviors more appropriately could do more to successfully intervene with at-risk youth and prevent more serious involvement with the justice system. School systems need to do more to incorporate alternative learning methods for these youth. Participants felt that Section 504 Plans and Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) are often ineffective, unattainable, or inconsistently executed. 

The numbers of children in juvenile justice may not be high in relationship to the numbers of students in schools, but once you put on a race/gender lens, these recommendations are essential to make sure our young men of color are connected to school, families and work. If schools had accountability mechanisms for how many of their young people had interactions with police, courts, and jails we might start to see all of these systems start to challenge the practices of institutional racism that are harming our children so terribly.