Prosecutor: School absences linked to higher youth gun crimes

Among young people in the Seattle area who've been charged with unlawful possession of a firearm, 85% had interrupted school attendance, according to the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office.

Why it matters: Shootings and other serious juvenile crimes are up in the county, defying a nationwide trend of decreasing violent crime , per data collected by prosecutors.

• The region has also seen an increase this year in the number of juvenile victims of gun crime, Rafael Serrano, a data analyst with the prosecutor's office, told Axios.

State of play: Regular school attendance is a "huge protective factor" against violence and crime, senior deputy prosecuting attorney Jamie Kvistad told Axios.

• Teens especially need to be interested, engaged, and active and have positive social support, she said.
• Without it, "they may drift toward anti-social groups and behaviors," Kvistad said.

By the numbers: The number of victims between the ages of 13 and 21 killed or injured by gunfire in King County stands at 90 so far this year.

• That's compared with 87 in the first three quarters of 2023, 72 in the first three quarters of 2022, and 63 in the first three quarters of 2019, per data from the prosecutor's office.
• As of July, at least 16 kids under the age of 18 had been killed by gunfire, according to a Seattle Times database .

Catch up quick: Hundreds of thousands of students nationwide disappeared from public schools during the pandemic and never returned, including about 11,000 in Washington .

What they're doing: In January, Kvistad helped launch the juvenile division's " safer schools strategy ," which is aimed at getting schools the information they need to guide students.

• State statute already requires that schools be notified when there's a conviction, but now prosecutors send nearly real-time alerts to districts and security teams telling them when a student has been charged with a gun-related felony, Kvistad told Axios.
• The program facilitates face-to-face conversations among the schools, probation officers, prosecutors, and the students and their families to get kids back on track, she said.
• So far, about 100 alerts have been sent out, prosecutor spokesperson Douglas Wagoner told Axios.

What they're saying: The courts can prompt a kid to go back to school, including for nontraditional, vocational and online courses, but the odds of success improve dramatically when young people get invested in their own future, Kvistad said.

• "I have seen kids charged with really serious crimes that have become successful and flourished, but I've never seen it happen without education."

What's next: "There is ample evidence that students that are truant have a higher likelihood of entering into the criminal justice system," Katy Payne, a spokesperson for the state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, told Axios.

• Superintendent Chris Reykdal has a budget proposal to the governor and the 2025 Legislature that includes funding for early warning systems to flag students who are at risk of disengaging from school.