Nearly a half-dozen parents of chronically absent Alaska school children now have more to deal with than the school principal or attendance counselors nagging them. Because their children aren’t making it to class after weeks, months and in some cases years of warnings and fines, the parents are facing criminal charges.

The action comes as school districts around the nation launch different strategies to lure absent students back to class. In Camden, N.J, 66 high school students will earn $100 each, provided they attend anti-truancy sessions and keep their attendance up over the next several weeks. The Camden students should be thankful they don’t live in Fort Worth, Texas, where students can earn $40 for anonymous tips to police about kids who cut class. Meanwhile, prosecutors in Indianapolis, Ind., are following an approach similar to Alaska’s, but different in that the criminal crackdown targets parents of truant children 11 years old and younger.

Alaska is focused on kids under 16. In June, Nome District Attorney John Earthman filed charges against four parents -- a couple and two single moms -- from the tiny villages of Wales and Shishmaref along the Bering Strait. They face multiple counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, a misdemeanor that carries a maximum penalty of one year in jail and a $10,000 fine.

While it’s the first time Earthman has pursued the criminal charge in his region, parents in the Kotzebue area have already found themselves in the same predicament. At least two cases have recently been charged there, and another three have recently been charged in the Anchorage area. It’s difficult to know how often prosecutors are resorting to this criminal charge because state records aren’t searchable by offenses alone.

The heightened effort to get more students attending class more often could become a homework assignment for the Alaska Legislature when it next meets in Juneau. Prosecutors say the state’s existing truancy laws contain some ambiguity that could use clarification. Still, there’s a good reason Alaska law requires children between 7 and 16 years old to attend school, said Deputy Attorney General Rick Svobodny.

“The correlation between truancy and murder is higher than the correlation between smoking and lung cancer,” he said.

Students who drop out of school are more likely to become murderers than those who get their diplomas, while those who aren’t being supervised by parents or teachers are more likely to drink, do drugs, and generally be at risk for a wide variety of juvenile delinquent activity, Svobodny said. These statistics fuel Svobodny’s mission to reduce truancy by making it a priority within the Department of Law.

“I am a career prosecutor. I don’t want to see any more people murdered. Given that correlation, I want to keep kids in school,” he said. “It’s one of the few ways that we can deal with a societal issue. To police officers and (district attorneys), it is an advantage to keep kids in school because hopefully it will reduce our case load in the future.”