Our Views: Collaboration on truancy

Crime statistics released by the Baton Rouge Police Department show that reported rapes, murders and robberies increased in Baton Rouge last year. Stopping that cycle of violence is a job that can’t be left to law enforcement agencies alone.

That’s why we’re heartened by the efforts of Baton Rouge’s Family and Youth Service Center, which opened last August to deal with truant youngsters.

Students who skip school are much more likely to engage in criminal activity. Local officials are doing the right thing in trying to get these youngsters back on track before they enter the criminal justice system.

The center, located on Government Street, brings together a number of educational, social service and law enforcement agencies under one roof to assess truant youngsters and determine what counseling or services they need to do better in life. Often, these interventions mean getting an entire family involved in solutions.

Initial funding for the service center came from the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board, the city-parish government, the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office and the 19th Judicial District Attorney’s Office, which each committed $100,000 for the center’s first three years of operation.

We commend these agencies for collaborating to help these troubled youngsters. Simply putting more police officers on the street will have limited success in stemming crime. Addressing the root causes of crime requires the kinds of teamwork demonstrated by the Family and Youth Service Center.

We hope the center proves successful.

Comments

1) Comment by [e-mail] - 05/03/2013

Comment # 2 by bourbon-soda is the root of the problem. "If you don't show the horse who's boss, he'll show you."

2) Comment by bourbon-soda - 05/03/2013

Also leading to whether "fear of the government" is superior to "fear of the Lord" as the beginning of wisdom, under a tyranny of the majority where Robin Hood has run for sheriff, and won, even if the Lord is a myth.

3) Comment by bourbon-soda - 05/03/2013

Another irony here is that violence or threat of violence (truancy law) is deployed to counter violence. Reality is that civilization rests on violence, it's just a matter of what kind. How many truants draw the conclusion that there's no problem with violence, I just need to get to be the baddest in the valley of the shadow, like the truant officer.

4) Comment by prbeav - 05/03/2013

@bourbon-soda: "seems to me that religiosity might be an asset in convincing someone to obey authority he doesn't understand." Your irony finally sunk in. I agree with your Catch 22.>>>>History has shown that piety can be used to establish power. Subjectivity is the expedient of misguided authorities. Look at the messes we are in. Many people are focused on subjectivity, but sooner or later, the objective truth prevails. To succeed, the people must focus on the objective truth.>>>>Here's the miracle of the US Constitution: for the only time in history, the power to govern was granted, in writing, to We the People, defined as the people who commit to seven secular goals. However, so far, the people are so focused on personal religiosity that they cannot govern the nation. Many of them expect God to have their back, not realizing that each individual personally defines God and thereby they are divided even within their own sect.>>>>Lastly, your statement reminds me of Machiavelli's "The Prince." He states, "Ecclesiastical principalities . . . are sustained by the ordinances of religion, which are so all-powerful, and of such a character that the principalities may be held no matter how their princes behave and live." Further, "the subjects, although not ruled, do not care.">>>>Americans, given the gift of governance by the governed, turn their backs on the duty stated in the preamble to the US Constitution.>>>>As always, thank you for your patience.

5) Comment by bourbon-soda - 05/03/2013

@prb - I apologize;.

6) Comment by prbeav - 04/03/2013

@bourbon-soda. I did not intend "you" to mean you, but rather the authority that would control the student using religion.

7) Comment by bourbon-soda - 04/03/2013

@prbeav I don't think I expressed a preference ("what you [I] want"). @DMJ and this "cycle of violence" has what to do with truancy? Violence or threat of violence is used to enforce truancy law; maybe that's it?

8) Comment by prbeav - 04/03/2013

@bourbon-soda. I agree. Teach em religion and they will follow. If you need their attention, change the religion a little.>>>>Give em a fish and they'll be grateful to you. Teach em to fish and some will become independent, but maybe that's not what you want, so indoctrinate them while they are grateful.

9) Comment by DMJ - 04/03/2013

Cycle of violence = being exposed to violence at a young age and later subjecting others to it

10) Comment by bourbon-soda - 04/03/2013

The treatment of "statistics" in the first paragraph is somewhat idiosyncratic. From the figures in the graphic accompanying "'‘Major crime’ down in BR in ’12", Feb 26, are selected the violent crimes "rapes, murders, and robberies," thereby excluding a category of violent crime "assaults," which decreased. The overall increase of the four violent crimes listed on 2/26, numbers only 38. It is admitted in the 2/26 article that some of the difference might be from a difference in the rate of reporting, but even if not, an increase of 38 in the population at risk, is not statistically significant. The "statistics" show an increase only in the simple sense of descriptive statistics, with no interpretation. Any reasonable use of inferential statistics yields an interpretation that violent crime is not credibly demonstrated to have increased. Aside from that, nonviolent crime and the number of crimes overall is down, and there is no evidence that rounding up truants will have any effect on the "cycle of violence," whatever that is.

11) Comment by bourbon-soda - 04/03/2013

@prbeav - seems to me that religiosity might be an asset in convincing someone to obey authority he doesn't understand.

12) Comment by prbeav - 04/03/2013

@bourbon-soda. I did not intend to relate truancy to religion. I intended to present a more valuable argument against truancy: reducing personal ignorance and positioning yourself to make choices for your personal life. I brought faith-based policy up, because faith-based thinking so permeates the accepted practices.>>>>However, if you like, I can make the case that most human failure arises from the reluctance to take personal responsibility to live the life you'd like to live--to give that responsibility to God, however you define God.>>>>Take for example adultery by self-appointed Christians in prominent roles, often political. The excuse is that they are only human and erred (as expected according to their religion) and SHOULD be forgiven. Their religious leadership is often more guilty than they are, taking as an example, Scottish Cardinal O'Brien, reported in today's paper.>>>>But the losers are the adulterers: their religion did not strengthen their commitment to be what they wanted to be; secular thought about integrity might have served them better. I am certain that O'Brien regrets his sin just as sincerely as David Vitter regrets his sin, but what they could kick themselves for is not being what they wanted to be--having already behaved such that forgiveness is requested.>>>>To put it my personal way, if there is anything I regret it is that Dad and Mom taught me Christianity (and smoking cigarettes among other wrongs) instead of open-minded integrity.>>>>The self-contradiction has been going on since religion was created. See for example, Aristophanes, "The Clouds," 423 BC, wherein adultery is justified because Zeus was an adulterer.>>>>I do not oppose anyone's religion but very much want to share caution about its risks.

13) Comment by bourbon-soda - 04/03/2013

@prbeav - are you asserting that truancy is related to contamination of the schools by religion? Where can I read more about this relationship (truancy and religion)?

14) Comment by bourbon-soda - 04/03/2013

If child abuse and neglect are precursors to truancy and crime, then some agencies should probably get after a root cause, statutory rape, itself a form of child abuse, that results in teenage single parenthood, like they are trying to in Milwaukee: << http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/ad-campaign-addresses- statutory-rape-and-teen-pregnancy-rs5on7p-158701085.html >> and << http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/124468683.html >> or search "milwaukee sentinel journal statutory rape united way"

15) Comment by prbeav - 04/03/2013

Sponsorship by the four institutions with closest responsibility for reforming families that allow students to choose to skip school seems a worthy recommendation. I hope the program succeeds. Perhaps a portion of the program will fulfill the suggestion by "Stephen.">>>>Also, I hope the program is not faith based. Faith based education focuses on "God's purpose," which, being sundry intellectual constructs by diverse groups, postures the believer in the permanent limbo of mystery: the church or the inculcator's ideology. "God's purpose" offers delusional subjectivity yet the consequences of the believer's conduct.>>>>Students and their families have natural duty to themselves to focus on the objective truth during initiation into the life-long process of reducing their personal ignorance, so that as they move into adulthood, they know enough to discover and select their personal preferences as to how to spend their remaining years. The options generally fall between fulfilling needed service (for which humankind will be grateful) or pursuing pleasure (about which humankind will not care) providing you do not harm others in the process; otherwise, people risk loss of freedom.

16) Comment by Stephen - 04/03/2013

Good job Baton Rouge. Now, in addition to this effort, let's look at children 0-5 carefully if they are not being properly nurtured. Child protection needs to have a broad prevention component in this city. Truants come from this group of children being profoundly neglected or abused.

17) Comment by DMJ - 04/03/2013

This is smart. The criminal element targets the young. Why shouldn't our educators and law enforcement officers? Good luck to all involved.

18) Comment by bourbon-soda - 04/03/2013

"I am now come to the enormous Crimes, and vast Multitude of Malefactors, that are all laid upon the want of this notable Education. That abundance of Thefts and Robberies are daily committed in and about the City, and great Numbers yearly suffer Death for those Crimes is undeniable: But because this is ever hooked in when the Usefulness of Charity-Schools is called in Question, as if there was no Dispute, but they would in a great measure remedy, and in time prevent those Disorders, I intend to examine into the real Causes of thosea Mischiefs so justly complained of, and doubt not but to make it appear that Charity- Schools, and every thing else that promotes Idleness, and keeps the Poor from Working, are more Accessary to the Growth of Villany, than the want of Reading and Writing, or even the grossest Ignorance and Stupidity." - Bernard Mandevill, 1732

19) Comment by [e-mail] - 04/03/2013

Money down the drain. There are more counselors and people worrying over the truants than there are truants; that observation can only empower truants with the object lesson that such behavior succeeds in their getting more attention, not change their ways. Those who care the least in any relationship are in charge of it. It's the same reason that some people are drawn into the power circles of others.