As most jurisdictions in America are fundamentally rethinking the nation's long, troubling history of over-incarceration, leave it to Missouri to go in exactly the wrong direction.

The state Supreme Court last week upheld a state law that allows for the jailing — yes, jailing — of parents for their children's unexcused absences from public schools.

What's next, the revival of debtors' prisons?

The case stemmed from the convictions of two single mothers over two children's unexcused absences, for a total of 13 and 16 days, from the Lebanon R-III School District in central Missouri.

Both mothers were convicted under a state law that mandates children attend school "on a regular basis." One woman was sentenced to two years' probation; the other served a week in jail.

The women argued the state law is unconstitutionally vague and inconsistently applied. The vagueness is apparent, effectively leaving it to the school districts to decide what "regular" attendance means.

The Lebanon district's policy is that anything under a 90% attendance rate fails to meet the "regular" attendance bar vaguely set by the law. Even within that arbitrary standard, there was debate about what constitutes an "unexcused" absence.

As for inconsistent application, that, too, is clearly true on its face, given that the convictions of the two women (both in the same small school district) were so rare that they made national news. Are we to believe their kids are the only two children in Missouri to have failed to attend school on "a regular basis"?

The high court nonetheless upheld the convictions 6-0 (with one justice not participating), ruling that "no Missouri parent would conclude attendance 'on a regular basis' means anything less than having their child go to school on those days the school is in session."

Whether these two convictions adhered to the letter of state law is one question. The bigger one should be, why would any law allow incarceration of people based on a violation that is not only utterly non-violent, but likely to involve socio-economic factors?

A 2018 study by The Economic Policy Institute found that children from lower-income homes were significantly more likely to miss school days. It's a finding confirmed by common sense, given the myriad special challenges poor families face in raising kids.

It's perhaps no coincidence that both the defendants are single mothers of young children, itself a challenging situation. At least one of the disputed absences was entered in the court record as "Mom had car troubles."

It's worth noting here that the U.S. Supreme Court in 1983 ruled that jailing debtors for their poverty is an unconstitutional violation of the 14th Amendment's equal-protection clause.

If the Missouri court's ruling has an upside, it's that it has drawn attention to a previously little-discussed state law that shouldn't be on the books. The Legislature can and should remedy that as soon as possible.

We're realistic about the prospects of that. This is the same Legislature, after all, that last year endorsed the legality of corporal punishment in Missouri schools. Needlessly punitive approaches to education are apparently still in vogue here.

Lawmakers who see the problems with that should nonetheless make the effort to update this law to prohibit enforcing it with incarceration. Child attendance in school is important, but it's difficult to imagine how a kid who clearly faces disadvantages in life already will be helped by having to visit mom in jail.

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