Hard on crime: Tackling truancy as a public safety issue

Some prosecutors like to be thought of as “hard on crime.” The people who work in the San Francisco District Attorney’s office prefer that you think of them as “smart on crime.”

And that’s what has driven the city’s top prosecutor, Kamala Harris, to launch a major campaign against one of the most pervasive problems in the City by the Bay: Truancy.

What does truancy have to do with crime? Well, for starters, it is a crime. With very limited exceptions, young Californians are legally required to attend school until the age of 18.

So, if you’re a teenager and you’re not in school, you’re committing a crime. And if you’re the parent of a younger child who isn’t in school, you’re committing a crime.  

Now, if you ask just about anyone who has lived, worked or played in San Francisco, they can tell you that it doesn’t take long after the meter has expired before you’ll find a ticket on your windshield. Miss feeding your downtown meter by even a few minutes and you’re looking at a whopping $63 fine.

But fail to get your kid to school on time — or at all? It’s unlikely anyone will make much of a fuss until you’ve done it again and again.

And again.

Why don’t we prosecute truancy with the same prosecutorial fervor as parking violations? Perhaps because truancy has long been seen as a victimless crime.

Well, it turns out, it’s not.

Want to know which students are most likely to drop out of school? Look at an attendance roster. Studies show that students who are chronically truant are exponentially more likely to drop out than non-truants. (One study found that 75 percent of students who were truant in high school did not graduate, compared to a mere 1 percent for non-truants.)

And dropouts are more likely to be unemployed, more likely to be on welfare and more likely to be incarcerated.

That makes truancy a public safety issue.

But that’s not all.

Over a four-year period starting in 2003, 94 percent of murder victims under the age of 25 in San Francisco were high school dropouts, according to numbers crunched by Harris’ office.

Ninety-four percent!

“It’s just a staggering number,” said Katherine Weinstein Miller, one of the prosecutors assigned to the anti-truancy project. “But it’s something that people don’t talk about much.”

San Francisco prosecutors believe they might have part of the answer: They’ve begun requiring the parents of truant children into court.

And Miller thinks its working. Three years into a program to prosecute the parents of young truants, the rate of chronically truant student has dropped.

An informational campaign about the law — and its consequences — has helped, Miller said.

And for those who still can’t seem to get their kids to school?

“What I’ve found is, for many parents, just the experience of having to go before a judge is a very real experience and they take it very seriously,” she said.

In the next few years, the effort will grow to include a focus on teenagers — those who may have learned their truant habits from their parents, but who are now old enough to take responsibility for themselves.

And there’s going to be plenty of work to do. In California, with very rare exceptions, anyone who is under the age of 18 and not enrolled in school is committing a crime.

Bringing truants and their parents into court “is a tough solution,” the San Francisco Chronicle's editorial board recently wrote, "but truancy is a tough problem. And considering the toll that truancy has on communities, it's a just one."