Scared smart or bored straight? Testing deterrence logic in an evaluation of police-led truancy intervention

Student truancy in secondary schools has increasingly been identified as an issue that merits the attention of the criminal and juvenile justice systems. This paper presents evaluation results from a recent study of a truancy intervention collaborative initiated and administered by a local sheriff's department in a large urban county in the southeastern United States. Findings provide a provisional test of a deterrence approach to truancy intervention. Implications are considered in the context of expanded criminal justice boundaries and an increasingly dominant role for law enforcement in what has traditionally been considered the informal responsibility of public educators.