Understanding the relationship between absence from school – unenforced, in the form of absence, or enforced, in the form of suspension or exclusion – and violence is a pressing issue. There are strong beliefs among some policy-makers and researchers that exclusions, in particular, are a direct cause of later offending and, on this basis, some school areas have moved to prohibit exclusions. While there are many harms associated with absence or exclusion, misconstruing the nature of the link between them and violence risks stigmatising those children and distracting attention from the underlying causes of violence. We seek to estimate the absence/exclusion-violence connections in a way that will inform school policies and guide the timing and context of violence prevention programmes for the future.