The Curfews For Teens

1 Julian Grebe English 093 12/10/09 …And Justice for all? Curfews are supposedly a crime fighting tool that makes people, in this case teens are supposed to be at home by a given time or they would be arrested and/or fined. The issue is whether curfews are effective in fighting crime or not [Participle]. One argument is that the curfews laws are unconstitutional; this is somewhat true because as pointed out by Judge Martin L. Greenberg “house confinement of all minors under age 18 was (not) a permissible restriction on minors constructional rights”. However most parents favor the curfews because kids are kept off the streets and out of harms way [Absolutes]. Whilst most parents favor the curfew, some argue that the curfews decimate. They argue that police will not be found in rich sections of the big cities. Rather concentrating their efforts in the poorer parts of town. They further argue that as a result, children of well-to-do parents will be able to stay out as long as they wish, while those of poorer parents will be subject to arrest or detention [Subordinator]. There is also an argument that is pointed out in the court case in the article by the ACLU

2 which states that there are exceptions to the law, it further goes on to talk about the teens involved in the case and how the activities they were doing when they got arrested which include “delivering a cake to a grandparent, eating at a restaurant with an adult friend, walking home from McDonald’s.” and even though the article does not say so it gives the reader a hint that those activities were either close to being exceptions or are not harmful to anyone in anyway. It further goes on to talk about who is willing to pay the price of “placing everyone in (in this particular case) West New York under house arrest” during the curfew hours [Relative Clause]. Apparently courts around the country have different opinions on the constitutionality of the juvenile curfews, “and the U.S Supreme Court has never ruled on their legality.” This brings us to the main argument of whether the curfews help reduce crime. There are some local statistics to support the reduction of crime, despite this “federal crime statistics show that a majority of juvenile crime occurs during non-curfew hours, peaking between 2 and 6 p.m.” and “studies have repeatedly shown that curfews are an ineffective crime fighting tool” So the effectiveness of the curfews is debatable. In my opinion the curfews are not effective and both articles tend to support that too, and

3 it just wastes police resources which could be used to catch the true criminals. Even though some cities show significant improvement with high figures, both articles do say that the curfews have made the juvenile criminals just change their hours of business [Coordinator]. So it’s possible that the curfews are ineffective or they are effective only in certain areas. Like David Rocah, I too believe that “the curfews add nothing more than the obligation to arrest the innocent as well.”