Officials Say Jailing of Truants Probably Won’t Solve Problem

Local school, police and probation officials Tuesday applauded a state Supreme Court ruling that truants who defy court orders to attend school may be jailed, but they do not believe that the decision will result in a substantial decline in truancy.

Police officials said they lack the staff to cope with the growing number of truant youngsters. And even if they could, the result could be to exacerbate crowded conditions at Los Angeles County’s three juvenile halls, where habitual truants who are found in contempt of court orders to return to school would be detained.

Statewide, about 930 habitually truant youngsters were referred to juvenile courts in 1986, according to the state Bureau of Criminal Statistics. In the Los Angeles Unified School District, about 30 youngsters were referred to court last year. Authorities said that very few truant youngsters reach that stage, which is considered the last resort.

The district does not collect truancy statistics as such, but officials said 14,900 students--over half of whom were senior high pupils--were picked up by police as truants last year as part of the district’s Operation Stay in School. About 8,600 of the truants returned to school as a result, while 6,300 remained truant.

“What happens now is that if a child is not going to school, there is no outcome,” said John Burton, a consultant on student attendance for the office of the Los Angeles County superintendent of schools. “You can threaten to take a youngster to court or to Juvenile Hall, but until this ruling, that was just a bluff. Now there’s another option.”

Don Bolton, who heads the student attendance office for the Los Angeles school district, said he welcomed the ruling because it “makes the courts a more viable option” for retrieving truant students.

“Our experience with the courts has been so poor that we try every other means. There have been only a couple of judges willing to tackle this issue. Hopefully, this (decision) will open that door for us. It’s going to be real interesting.”

But Kathryn Doi Todd, presiding judge of the Los Angeles County juvenile court division, was more skeptical.

“I don’t know that (the Supreme Court ruling) is going to help,” she said. “Are they trying to scare someone into going to school? It’s going to take more than this.

N. C. Johnson, who supervises field services for the county Probation Department, questioned the practicality of the ruling for juvenile detention facilities. The county’s three facilities--Central, Las Padrinas and San Fernando--have bed space for 1,317 youngsters but, as of Monday, they were accommodating 1,810.

Having to accommodate truants “would compound the overcrowding problem” in the centers, he said. “We need to save room at Juvenile Hall for more serious offenders.”

Need Separation

Not only would the juvenile halls be hard pressed to find space for these youngsters, Johnson added, but they would have to keep them separate from minors being detained for more serious offenses.

Johnson also said that jailing a youngster because of chronic truancy may not be the most effective remedy. “Detention alone may not be a motivating factor to improve school attendance,” even in the most severe cases, he said.

But Cmdr. William Booth, spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department, said: “I think kids will take this seriously. They have to be interested in a court order that could send them to jail.”

The LAPD and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department have special teams of officers who locate truants and return them to schools. In most cases, Booth said, police involvement ends there unless school administrators ask police to petition the court to order a student to stay in school.

Time-Consuming Steps

Truancies are on the increase, said Capt. Bob Taylor of the LAPD’s Hollywood Division, citing the approximately 200 students the division’s school car picks up each month and the record 400 returned to campuses in December alone. When combined with a limited budget and number of officers, Taylor said, the division would be unable to go through the time-consuming steps necessary under the state court’s order to prosecute truants.

“I like the idea, but it is a cumbersome step,” Taylor said. “You would have to catch the minor several times to determine a pattern of behavior, then you have to go to court to get the order and then you have to catch the minor again--probably several times--in order to determine he is disregarding the court order.”