Texas shifts from criminal truancy
Fines, jail time seen as no solution to root problems of youths.
— A long-standing DALLAS Texas law that has sent about 100,000 students a year to criminal court — and some to jail — for missing school is off the books, though a Justice Department investigation into one county’s truancy courts continues.
Gov. Greg Abbott has signed into law a measure to decriminalize unexcused absences and require school districts to implement preventive measures. It will take effect Sept. 1.
Reform advocates say the threat of a heavy fine — up to $500 plus court costs — and a criminal record wasn’t keeping children in school and was sending those who couldn’t pay into a criminal justice system spiral. Under the old law, students as young as 12 could be ordered to court for three unexcused absences in four weeks. Schools were required to file a misdemeanor charge against students with more than 10 unexcused absences in six months. And unpaid fines landed some students behind bars when they turned 17.
“Most of the truancy issues involve hardships,” state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, said. “To criminalize the hardships just doesn’t solve anything. It costs largely low-income families. It doesn’t address the root causes.”
Only two states in the U.S. — Texas and Wyoming — send truants to adult criminal court. In 2013, Texas prosecuted about 115,000 cases, more than twice the number of truancy cases filed in juvenile courts of all other states, according to a report from the nonprofit advocacy group Texas Appleseed. An estimated $10 million was collected from court costs and fines from students for truancy in fiscal year 2014 alone, the Texas Office of Court Administration said.
Texas Appleseed says the policies disproportionately affected low-income, Hispanic, black and disabled students. The group was also among several groups that filed a U.S. Justice Department complaint about Dallas County’s specialty truancy courts, which in 2012 prosecuted over 36,000 cases, more than any other Texas county. The Justice Department in March began looking into whether students had received due process, something spokeswoman Dena Iverson said will continue as the department evaluates the legislation’s impact.
In 12 of the state’s largest 15 counties, Texas Appleseed said, at least 1,283 teenagers were jailed for failure to attend school from January 2013 through April 2015. At least 910 of them spent at least one night in jail.
Peyton Walker’s absences began piling up in seventh grade as she suffered from depression, anxiety and migraines, she said. After missing a court date in Dallas County truancy court at the age of 12, she said she was arrested and handcuffed at school in the Dallas suburb of Mesquite. Walker said the legal situation just made things worse.
“It was more: No matter if I go (to school) or not, I’m going to go to court anyway,” said Walker, now 18, who graduated from high school this spring. She and her mother, who is on disability, still have $2,000 in pending fines, and Walker won’t be able to get a driver’s license until they are paid.