Truancy Laws and the Ghost of King George III

by Wyoming Liberty Staff

When the Colonies broke away from King George III and his British Empire, the driving force was to unshackle everyone, rich or poor, from the tyranny of an authoritarian monarchy. It is often, and rightly so, noted that American independence created an era of unprecedented entrepreneurial freedom. This in turn resulted in levels of prosperity unheard of in the Old World. Industrialization created jobs, opportunity and wealth for millions of Americans and encouraged countless immigrants to come and build their own bright future.

What is less often noted, but equally important, is that American independence also meant independence for the poor. A man living on what his daily labor may bring him did not necessarily rise to a higher standard of living after Independence than what he could attain under British rule - but for him independence meant liberation from a culture of patronizing oppression that was endemic in Europe at the time. In the stale monarchies that had been ruled by an aristocratic elite for centuries, Europe's poor were shoved to the side, marginalized, kept in de facto slavery by oppressive property laws and all sorts of punitive debt practices. They were often marginalized in an education system that would have provided their children with opportunities to a better life.

In the newly minted Constitutional Republic the poor were liberated of many of the bonds of social stigmata, exclusionary property laws and deprivation of entrepreneurship opportunities. Surely, life was by no means perfect, but overall government was a lot less invasive of the lives of the poor.

Liberation of the poor was an intentional consequence of the American Revolution. Just as the days of slavery were counted after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, so the bonds that kept the destitute in perpetual poverty were beginning to fall apart.

With this in mind, it is disheartening to see how government practices, clearly directed at the poor, have returned to American soil. Government-provided welfare is one example - and a big one deserving of plenty of attention - which entraps low-income, low-educated people in perennial dependency on entitlements. It is difficult to exaggerate the long-term detrimental effects of welfare dependency on labor supply, ability to self determination and the transformation of families into multi-generational wards of the welfare state.

Over the short term, though, there are even more egregious invasions of the lives of the poor. In an excellent commentary, Cato Institute senior fellow Walter Olson explains how truancy laws - seemingly harmless - have put a heavy shackle around the wrist of poor parents all over the country:

Texas not only criminalized truancy but has provided for young offenders to be tried in adult courts, leading to extraordinarily harsh results especially for poorer families. But truancy-law horror stories now come in regularly from all over the country, from Virginia to California. In Pennsylvania a woman died in jail after failing to pay truancy fines; "More than 1,600 people have been jailed in Berks County alone—where Reading is the county seat—over truancy fines since 2000.") The criminal penalties, combined with the serious consequences that can follow non-payment of civil penalties, are now an important component of what has been called carceral liberalism: we're finding ever more ways to menace you with imprisonment, but don't worry, it's for your own good. Yet jailing parents hardly seems a promising way to stabilize the lives of wavering students.

Wyoming is no exception to the truancy over-reach. Well-performing, well-behaving, straight-A students who just happen to be absent more than ten days during the school year are put on a no-credit status. Parents then need to make a formal appeal to the school district to maybe, hopefully, perhaps have the no-credit status revoked.

Resourceful parents will no doubt know how to handle this, though they are still not guaranteed to have their kids taken off the no-credit status. But parents with little or no education, struggling to break out of poverty and welfare dependency, many of whom are kept busy by two jobs just to pay the bills, can easily find themselves overwhelmed, intimidated and at the mercy of an unfriendly school bureacracy.

In some states, like Pennsylvania, the punishment of truancy is even more punishing for the poor:

More than 1,600 people have been jailed in Berks County alone — where Reading is the county seat — over truancy fines since 2000, more than two-thirds of them women, the newspaper reported. Charges are sometimes lodged against the students rather than their parents.

This rings an ugly echo of the allegedly unconstitutional debtor's prison practice. Alas, the Mercury News reports:

Hundreds of parents, some impoverished and overwhelmed, have been jailed in Pennsylvania for failing to pay court fines that arise from truancy hearings after their children skip school, creating what some call a "debtor's prison" for people like Eileen DiNino. DiNino, 55, of Reading, was found dead in a jail cell Saturday morning, hours after she surrendered to serve a 48-hour sentence. She had racked up $2,000 in fines, fees and court costs since 1999 as the Reading School District tried to keep her children in class, most recently at a vocational high school.

What job opportunities await a parent who has been to jail? What path to a better life can a man carve out for himself after having had his finances, his credit and his reputation destroyed by government - over his child's few days of truancy?

What accomplishment is there in this for society that justifies destruction a parent's life?

A free society does not offer the poor man any entitlements. It does, however, offer him three things: private, voluntarily provided charity to help him back on his feet; economic freedom to give him a path to self determination; and protection against the invasive practices of an authoritarian government.

Even when government practices are not formally designed to punish poverty, they can be clearly slanted against those with little or no intellectual or monetary means. That is undoubtedly the case with truancy laws. Life in poverty is tough enough; government need not make it harder, or else poverty will cease to be a period in a man's life and will once again, just like in King George III's England, become a lifelong curse.