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| Why Don’t Youth Curfews Work? |
| By jjie.org - Mike Males |
| Published: 10/14/2013 |
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Forget constitutional rights or fairness; doesn’t it seem logical that a curfew requiring police to remove an entire group of people from public spaces for hours would at least reduce public crimes and safety risks involving that group? Well, it doesn’t. Research consistently “fails to support the argument that curfews reduce crime or criminal victimization,” a 2003 review of multiple studies found. Monrovia, California’s widely acclaimed youth curfew famously celebrated by then-President Bill Clinton was indeed followed by a decline in crime — one that was much larger during non-curfew hours than during curfew hours. Vernon, Connecticut’s youth curfew was followed by increases in crime, particularly youthful offending, while nearby cities without curfews enjoyed decreases. Studies of dozens of cities across the nation found no effect or bad effects following youth curfews. An 18-year analysis of 21 cities in California found youth curfews useless or worse. San Jose’s and Chicago’s periods of vigorous curfew enforcement coincided with persistent failure to reduce crime in the late 1990s and early 2000s, while curfew-free cities such as San Francisco, Oakland, New Haven and New York City had impressive crime declines. Even a study purporting to validate curfews — which failed to compare cities with and without them — inadvertently found criminal arrests of youth fell faster across the country in general than in cities that enforced curfews. Understanding why curfews fail requires radically revising our entire view of young people perpetrated by law enforcement, interest groups, politicians, and the news media from Fox News on the right to The Nation on the left. Imagine instead — however impossibly, given the drumbeat of fear — that teenagers in this country are not a mass of risk-happy thugs, gunners, rapists and bullies. Imagine that police bent on curfew enforcement could stop hundreds of teenagers late at night and find virtually no wrongdoing — just park basketball players, movie-going throngs, restaurant socializers; that is, young people enjoying their communities. CJCJ’s journal analysis of 400 police citations found just that: Curfews function as remarkably effective tools to waste law enforcement resources removing law-abiding youths from public places, where youthful presence serves to deter crime. Urban scholarship from William H. Whyte and Jane Jacobs to common knowledge in European and Latin American cities validate that the more folks on the streets, young or old, the safer the public space. A Toronto Mountie once laughed when I asked if the city had a youth curfew: “Maybe for six year-olds.” Read More. |
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I would suspect that why curfews do not work is because police don't enforce them. Talk to any police and well above 95% will tell you that juvenile delinquinecy is not a problem they focus on. Because of several factors, police tend to focus on "exciting" crime: burglary in process, high speed chase, etc. What they don't focus on is what causes people to do these things. LEO's are conservative by nature, that is they take the stance that crime is individualistic. Unfortunately research shows that most people, even law abiding, acting within a social context. Free will isn't all that free. Where neighborhoods are allowed to deteriorate, crime increases. Most cops don't focus on "quality of life" crime:" prostitution, drug dealing, etc. That's why they have "tasks forces" They don't have the education to realize that crime is a social ill, not an individual ill. Cities where cops were forced by councils to go after juvenile delinquency have seen reductions in crime. But most people have the attitude: I'm a cop and you're not so don't tell me how to do my job. They need to remember that they will do what the public tells them to do. Since most crime is committed by 14-24 year olds, focusing on that demographic will have a strong impact on crime. I haven't heard in the last 20 years of cop picking up the 13 year old not in school because "it's not my job."