Truancy isn't a law enforcement issue

This past school year, I was a guardian for a black senior at Albany High School. He had been enrolled in school in New York City for the previous three years, and was a serious truant. Shortly after enrolling at Albany High, he attempted to return to his old ways — being late and skipping an occasional class. But this time it didn't work. Whenever he failed to show up for class on time, I received a call from school officials. This allowed me to respond quickly, and to work with school staff. It worked. My young man stayed in school, graduated last June and now attends college. If law enforcement officers had been involved, I believe things would have turned out differently. This student and his family had a history of negative contacts with police that included parental arrests and police abuse. The student mistrusted the police because he had already experienced a long history of police stops and abusive treatment before his 15th birthday.

Under a newly funded program, Albany police will patrol the streets in the morning to stop people thought to be younger than 16, who are required by law to attend school. If it is determined that the detained person is a truant, he or she will be arrested (according to the legal definition, you've been arrested when you're not free to leave) and brought to a detention center. Officials will then attempt to contact the parents and, if located, will force them to take their child to school. This approach may sound reasonable and effective to many. Truancy is thought to be a major factor driving low reading scores and high dropout rates. But it is often the tip of the iceberg. It is symptomatic of a number of underlying social, economic and political factors that will be ignored under this approach. One of them is that often these children do not live with their parents.

Albany's school population is two-thirds black. Most of the black students attend school regularly, yet only half graduate. They attend schools that are inadequately funded with a staff that is primarily white, many of whom ignore or fail to understand the social and historical factors that impinge on the lives of their students and their families, particularly racism and differential treatment by law enforcement. African-American children are exposed to negative images of themselves in the media on a daily basis. Many of these children witness arrests and have parents or relatives in prison. While the new city program appears to have a social service component attached, it is minimal and not devoted to addressing systemic problems. It also does not recognize the racial impact that will surely follow. Black males are more likely to be stopped, many of whom will be 16 years of age and older and not required by law to attend school. These stops, often done in violation of the Fourth Amendment, which requires probable cause to stop someone, increase opportunities for conflicts with the police and ultimately lead to arrests. In Albany last year, nearly 80 percent of youths arrested were black and Latino. Already, one out of every three young black males in this country is under the control of the criminal justice system. These statistics represent a crisis that society continues to ignore.

Any program designed simply to pick up truants and return them to school without a strong and serious commitment to alleviating the forces that make life difficult for our children is deceptive. We need strong families in which parents can earn a decent wage and in which family members live in adequate housing, receive proper health care, gain access to good, nurturing schools with strong educational programs, and be treated fairly and equitably in all aspects of their lives. Programs must be offered that allow positive contact opportunities that bring law enforcement officers, students and parents together so negative images, attitudes and stereotypes can be discarded. Why should police always be placed in destructive positions in our community? For the past several years, the Center for Law and Justice has asked the city of Albany to expand and support the award-winning "Street Smart" program that uses police officers, lawyers and school personnel to teach youths about their rights and civic responsibilities, and how to make good decisions about their lives; to reject drugs and violence; and to relate to authority figures, particularly police officers, in a positive manner. With the new truancy project, it is even more important that "Street Smart" be supported by the city. Yet that support has not come. Yes, truancy is a problem. So are illiteracy and school dropouts. But we owe our children and our community something more substantial and promising than simply using the police to round up truants and take them to school without a comprehensive initiative to address the underlying problems that contribute to truancy in the first place.

Alice Green is president of the Center for Law and Justice in Albany.

Alice Green
20 October 2004

http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=296653

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