FAMILY WATCH : Truant Officer

The D.A. surely knows how to get a parent’s attention. When youngsters play hooky, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office refuses to let parents off the hook. Its anti-truancy program puts the mothers and fathers of chronic truants on notice: Your youngsters will go to school or you could face court action. That threat encourages greater parental responsibility, and greater school attendance.

Why would a prosecutor care about kids skipping school? Deputy D.A. Brenda English, the attorney who runs the program, told Times staff writer Bettijane Levine: “Statistics show 85% of all daytime crime is committed by school kids. Statistics also show truancy is the single most common factor in the profiles of those who become adult criminals.” Hers isn’t the only reliable testimony on this subject.

Wilbert Rideau, a convict who is in his 31st year of a life term in a Louisiana prison, recently told Time Magazine: “ . . . Education is the only real deterrent (to crime). Look at all of us in prison. We were all truants and dropouts, a failure of the education system. Look at your truancy problem and you’re looking at your future prisoners. Put the money there.” His message, from behind bars, is certainly compelling.

The L.A. district attorney’s juvenile division has come up with a preventive program worth emulating. Even in an era of very tight budgets, it allows prosecutors to work outside of the courtroom to scare some sense into truants and their parents before it is too late. This is creative law enforcement at its best.