[Barrin92]

>I don't see why cities should have to resort to paying them off.

you're always paying someone. You can enact punitive and harsh measures and put kids and teenagers into the justice system where they'll cost 10x as much if not more including in their adulthood, or you can draw a baseline in and simply pay them enough money to not resort to this quasi-begging. Couple this with an attendance requirement to go to school and you're probably saving yourself countless of dollars so I don't really see the issue.

It's basically analogous to war on drugs type policies. Instead of just providing addicts with clean needles and drugs you spent ten times as much and wasting police resources on chasing harmless people around. It's moralizing instead of effective policy