If he’s elected Kansas attorney general, Sen. David Adkins says he’ll make children’s issues a “key responsibility” of the office.

Meeting with the Journal-World editorial board on Tuesday, Adkins, R-Leawood, said he was especially interested in finding ways to break the cycles of violence that perpetuate criminal behavior within troubled families.

Adkins, 41, also promised to improve communication among the state’s law enforcement agencies, go after those who prey on the disabled and elderly, and do more to crack down on methamphetamine labs.

Adkins said he knew of many instances in which rural prosecutors have backed off filing charges in methamphetamine cases because they doubted the KBI laboratory would be able to process the evidence within the required 180 days.

“I believe the KBI is underfunded,” he said.

First elected to the Legislature in 1992, Adkins said that he would not be shy in approaching lawmakers on judicial issues.

“As attorney general, I would want people to want me to expect me to be in the room when these issues are discussed in much the same way that we want Dale Dennis in the room when school finance is discussed,” Adkins said. Dennis, deputy commissioner at the Kansas Department of Education, is known for his work on school-finance issues.

As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Adkins said he was confident that bills designed to increase prosecution of stalking and date violence would pass this year.

Earlier, Adkins addressed a meeting of the Lawrence Optimists Club at Presbyterian Manor.

In the GOP primary, Adkins is opposed by former state legislator Phill Kline, a conservative who last year unsuccessfully challenged 3rd District Congressman Dennis Moore, a Democrat, in the general election.

Adkins graduated from Kansas University in 1983 with a bachelor’s degree in political science.

He graduated from KU Law School in 1986.