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While driving home from work late one Tuesday night, he noticed the blare of a siren and the blinding lights in his rearview mirror. 'I was stopped and questioned five times, by five different police officers on my three-mile drive home,' said a 16-year-old from Monrovia, CA ('Do You Know Where Your Children Are?' 1). Sadly, Monrovia, CA. is not the only city in our otherwise 'fair' country with such a troublesome law as youth curfew. In fact, a recent survey of the nation's 1,010 cities with populations more than 30,000 found that only one third claimed curfew enforcement was responsible for reducing youth crime ('The Impact of Juvenile Curfew Laws in California' 1). Since curfew laws have proven themselves to be ineffective when trying to reduce youth crime, and actually have the potential to turn law-abiding teens into criminals: it is obvious they need to be thrown into societies trash bag, never to be used again.
Parents have plenty of things to worry about when it comes to their children: if they smoke, if they're hanging out with the wrong crowd, or if they are getting good enough grades. With all these worries, it seems nonsensical to throw one more worry on the already large pile of worries parents have to deal with. 'My kids are home-schooled,' complains mother Tiana Hutchinson, 'I shouldn't have to worry about them getting arrested every time I send them outside to play.' ('Do You Know Where Your Children Are?' 4).
Parents aren't the only ones upset with this problem-causing ordinance. In 1995, the American Civil Liberties Union, acting on behalf of thousands of law-abiding youth in California, filed suit in Federal District Court to challenge the state's juvenile curfew ordinance ('ACLU Challenges California's Curfew Law' 1).
With all this dissension, it is hard to understand why curfew ordinances are in such abundance across the U.S. One unanimous mayor justified by saying that they reduce adolescent crime rates ('The Impact of Juvenile Curfew Laws' 4). This is hard to believe since a recent survey showed that adolescent crime was on a decline in all U.S. cities, not just the ones who impose nighttime (Slevin A1).
There is also an entire other battle going on over ...
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