"Generally youth crime is burglaries, vehicle crime, shoplifting. I'm not saying they're responsible for it all, but you have to think if these kids are not at school ... where are they?"
The operations were conducted to get more of the truant children back into the classroom, Ms Lane said.
Intermediate and primary schools in the area were likely to be targeted in upcoming operations as well.
"The message needs to get out there: Education is vital to a young person's development and students under 16 years are required by law to attend school.
"Action will be taken, including prosecution if parents fail to enrol or [if they] condone truancy," she said.
Manurewa High School associate principal Daniel Wilson said truancy was an issue facing all schools, and wasn't a particular problem in Manurewa.
"There's an issue right across the country but I think if they [police] did a sweep in any area there would be similar numbers."
But the 321 teenagers with unexplained absences last Wednesday made up 7 per cent of the three schools' combined rolls of 4586, according to the Ministry of Education.
The most recent national estimated average for truancy - last year - was just 3.9 per cent.
Alfriston College deputy principal Steve Saville admitted once students wagged, it was difficult for the school to know what they were doing.
"It's obvious that if they're not being supervised they could get up to nuisance. The concern for any school in the country is that if they [students] are truant, they're not getting an education."
But it's not just daytime youth crime that's been on the rise. South Auckland police say they're catching increasingly younger criminals committing crimes in the region.
Figures released this week by the Ministry of Justice show the number of children and youths being charged in court was 17 per cent lower in 2013/14 than the previous year.
But of the 2268 charges laid against youths, 47 per cent of those were for robbery, burglary and theft offences.
Detective Senior Sergeant Shaun Vickers, Counties Manukau officer in charge of forensics, said crimes such as joyrides in stolen cars, burglary, dangerous driving and aggravated robbery were being committed by children as young as 12.
"This is completely unacceptable and we expect more from our youth.
"We have always caught young people driving stolen cars, but I would say that more recently some of the ages have been becoming younger," he said. "Sometimes the age is dropping to 12-15 - lately we've been catching children of that age."
Girls drive wrong way to evade police
Two 16-year-old girls arrested last week after they drove the wrong way on to a motorway in a stolen car are just two young criminals among many police are encountering.
On Monday morning about 9am, police saw the stolen car in Mangere and "signalled for it to stop with red and blue lights and sirens", a police spokeswoman said.
The car had been identified as one stolen from a Mt Roskill address.
The driver failed to stop and instead tried to evade the police by entering State Highway 21 - the Southwestern Motorway - by driving down an off-ramp against the traffic.
"At this point police abandoned the pursuit and observed the vehicle travelling on the shoulder approximately 500 metres along the motorway, near Massey Rd, where the occupants got out and fled into nearby bushes," the spokeswoman said.
More police cars, the police Eagle helicopter and a police dog were used to catch two of the four occupants of the car - the two 16-year-old girls.
"Police are following positive lines of inquiry to identify the other two occupants."
While in the air, the Eagle helicopter witnessed another suspicious vehicle and directed police cars to it.
Another four youths - a 14-year-old boy, two 15-year-old girls and a 16-year-old girl - were caught by police in the vehicle, which had been stolen, and were arrested.
