Judge Mark McGinnis knew he wanted to be a judge coming out of law school. After 10 years working as an attorney, he ran and was elected to be an Outagamie County Judge in 2005. Only two years into his dream job, however, he began to wonder if he would make it. He was feeling the burden of seeing people at their worst and having little other recourse than sending them to prison. That feeling motivated him to do something innovative.
Judge McGinnis did some research and discovered that those who came before him often had a background of chronic truancy in high school. Rather than let that bad habit build into a life of trouble, McGinnis designed an early intervention program to prevent young people from starting their adult lives on the wrong side of the law. He started a truancy court.
Learn more about how truancy court started, how it works, and how successful it has been in the decade it has been operating.
