Data Sources
Oklahoma State Courts Network (OSCN)
Open Justice Oklahoma conducts comprehensive data collection and analysis utilizing court records accessible through the Oklahoma State Court Network website. This report presents findings from an examination of felony, misdemeanor, and traffic cases filed statewide from 2012 through 2022. Within this time frame, over 2.4 million charge filings were recorded.
Office of Juvenile Affairs (OJA)
Data was requested from the Office of Juvenile Affairs (OJA) for the years 2018 to 2022. The data includes anonymous information on referrals to the agency, including demographics and referral information. A total of 63,617 referrals were recorded within this period.
Methodology
In conducting this analysis, truancy was defined in accordance with Oklahoma Statutes, specifically 70 O.S. § 10-105 (OSCN 2024). This statute, titled “Neglect or refusal to compel child to attend school”, provides for the compulsory attendance of all school children ages 5 through 18.
Criminal offense filings in Oklahoma exhibit variation in how they are recorded in district court data. Instances of the same offense, such as truancy, may be listed under different descriptions as shown in the table below. To capture all instances of these charges accurately, we employ regular expressions to detect recurring patterns and transform the raw charge description into meaningful categories.