At the same time, it is not clear that more stringent laws or punishments would do much to alter the situation, and short of creating a school system that is as closely guarded as a prison it will be all but impossible to keep all students at school all the time. Laws in this area are this an adequate mix of liberal policy and expedience. Prevention is the only practical goal of truancy laws and enforcement, and it is not clear that police efforts are successful at preventing truancy while they are effective at stopping crime once it is detected.
It is not likely that a great deal of police time is spent on this type of status offending on its own; if truant adolescents are not engaging in activity that would draw attention to themselves (such as engaging in other illicit or illegal acts), it would be very difficult to determine probable cause to approach and arrest them. Some time is definitely taken up in dealing with these
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The general public seems to have the idea that children and adolescents ought to be in school, yet no one is at all surprised by teenagers skipping school. Seen as both a rite of passage and a way of life, truancy is not considered a very serious offense by most people. This is perhaps part of the problem of this status offense.
Status Offenders Throughout modern history, society has struggled with how to handle children and adolescents who committed crimes. Historically, juveniles who came to the attention of the courts have been considered less guilty, because of their age, than adults (Klein, 1998). This in turn developed into an attitude at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century that the appropriate role for police and the courts was to
Ethical Issues in Criminal Justice The juvenile justice system has a unique position in the American justice system as a whole. Its function should be to rehabilitate the juvenile offender before he or she becomes an adult criminal. Juvenile records are expunged when the individual becomes an adult. There are, of course, some exceptions of when a juvenile who commits a very serious crime and is charged as an adult, but
Truancy and Court Appearances The Relationship between School Truancy Rates and Court Cases Research, albeit it clinical, case study, empirical, descriptive, historical, or any combination thereof, must exhibit and command interest, enthusiasm, and passionate commitment. The first step in the attainment of a desired research effort, one that convinces the reader as to the topic's efficacy and usefulness, is to develop a scientific approach toward the phenomenon under investigation. Second, a research
Attendance is a critical factor in school performance. But while poor attendance and truancy have been problems for schools virtually ever since anti-truancy laws were passed, as noted by Tomal, Schilling, & Trybus (2013), finding reliable data can be a challenge to accurately evaluate the extent of the problem, the specific groups most severely impacted by the issue of truancy, and thus solving the problem has been vexing for many
Juvenile Crime Issues in the Criminal Justice System Similar to the concept of childhood, the legal idea of the juvenile justice system or status is relatively new. In the United States, the juvenile court system was established approximately 200 years ago with the first juvenile court instituted in 1899. Before the inception of the first juvenile court, children and the youth were regarded as small adults and were therefore prosecuted and
Court-Mandated Educational Course for First-Time, Juvenile Offenders Using education as a means for combating juvenile delinquency issues is nothing new. In fact New York State is launching a program that allows juvenile offenders to keep a portion of their high school credits even when they're incarcerated so that when they do return to school, they can return on a steady progression towards graduation: "Starting this fall, the program, called Close to
