Practice Goals
The goal of juvenile curfew laws is to reduce youth-related crime, violence, and delinquency by keeping juveniles at home during the nighttime hours, where they will presumably be exposed to fewer opportunities to commit crime or become a victim of crime. More recently, curfew laws have been enacted to apply to the time that youths should be in school, to allow the police to better enforce truancy laws.
Target Population
The target population comprises all juveniles in a geographical area, as defined by individual curfew laws. Some laws specify youths under 18 years of age, while others specify youths under age 17.
Practice Components
Juvenile curfew laws include a variety of regulated activities and penalties. The laws vary in targeted age groups, hours of restricted activities, exceptions, and sanctions.
Curfew hours vary, but often begin at 10 or 11 p.m. during the week and midnight on weekends, and end at 5 or 6 a.m. However, some daytime curfew ordinances, designed to keep youths in school and off the streets, have been enacted and apply to 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.
Common exceptions to the laws include traveling with a parent or guardian; or returning home from school, work, or a religious activity. Sanctions can include fines (that may increase with the number of violations), community service, or driver’s license restrictions.
Practice Theory
Curfew laws are a general deterrence strategy aimed at reducing crime and victimization in the overall population of juveniles. That is, reduced opportunity to commit crimes should translate into committing fewer crimes (Wilson et al. 2016). From a theoretical perspective, curfews are primarily designed to prevent crime and violence by keeping juveniles away from delinquent opportunities. They are viewed by some as part of a more vigorous law-enforcement effort, and by others as identifying juveniles in early stages of delinquency and providing them with an opportunity for intervention programs. However, juvenile curfew laws have been the subject of numerous legal challenges (see Additional Information below).
Additional Information
Curfew laws have been challenged on the grounds that they are unconstitutional, based on violations of freedom of speech, equal protection and due process, freedom of movement, rights of parents to rear their children, and that the youths are mostly not adjudicated delinquents (Wilson et al. 2016; Schwartz and Wang 2005; Yeide 2009). The constitutional basis for infringing on the rights of youth rests on the assumption that curfews reduce juvenile crime and victimization. The results of the challenges are mixed, but Wilson and colleagues (2016), note that the more exceptions for “`acceptable activities’ (for example, legitimate employment) a given policy provides, the more likely it is to survive a challenge on constitutional grounds.”
