Law passed to try to help reduce violent crime and juvenile arrests, but critics say curfews are ineffective and discriminatory

Amid chants of “no youth curfew”, Baltimore police began enforcing a controversial new measure requiring the city’s youngest residents to be off the streets by 9pm. The new curfew took effect on Friday night.

“We have kids that are falling through the cracks,” the city’s mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, said in defense of the law, which the city says is meant to protect children. “Turning a blind eye isn’t helping any of these kids.”

Youth advocates in the city agree there is a problem with juvenile delinquency, but say a curfew is not the solution.

“You’re not going to get that by having cops picking up kids in vans and taking them to curfew centers,” said Jason Tashea, the juvenile justice policy director at Advocates for Children and Youth, which opposed the curfew law.

Curfew laws have long pitted youth advocates against policymakers and divided parents and residents. Baltimore’s law, which triggered charged public debate in a crime-stricken city, was no exception.

Critics say curfews are ineffective and discriminatory, and have the potential to entangle young people – especially teens from minorities and low-income groups – in the criminal justice system. But supporters, who in Baltimore include the mayor and police commissioner, say the city’s law is designed to do the opposite, by identifying vulnerable youths before they fall into crime.



Out past curfew

Baltimore’s new ordinance – said to be among the strictest in the country – expands the city’s current curfew law by introducing graduated curfews for unaccompanied children and teens.

Under the law, approved by the city council in June, children 13 and younger must be off the streets by 9pm, and those aged 14-16 must be indoors by 10pm on school nights and 11pm on weekends and during the summer.

In step with national trends, violent crime and juvenile arrests are down in Baltimore, but the city is still plagued by relatively high rates of drug crime and gang violence. This is especially true in minority and low-income neighborhoods with an already strong police presence.

Police commissioner Anthony Batts has said delinquent juveniles are partly responsible for the persistent crime in these areas, and believes a stricter curfew will help. Batts pushed for a curfew law in his previous post as Oakland police chief.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Residents walk through Collington Square Park minutes before a curfew law took effect in Baltimore. Photograph: James Lawler Duggan/Reuters

However, Angela Johnese, the director of the mayor’s office on criminal justice, told the Guardian that the new law is not intended to reduce crime. Rather, it is meant to flag at-risk or neglected youths and connect them with the appropriate services, such as counseling, mentoring and tutoring.

She said unsupervised young people on the streets at night were at an increased risk of becoming victims of crime, or of perpetrating it.

“In 12 months from now, when we look back, we want to be able to see that we’ve made progress connecting young people and their families with support that will keep young people out of the juvenile justice system,” Johnese said.

But critics are skeptical that police are the appropriate coordinators between young people and support services, and call this assumption “deeply flawed”.

“Regardless of the intention behind the [curfew] law, the law will increase unnecessary interactions between law enforcement and youth in a city where we’ve had a really negative track record with those interactions,” said Sonia Kumar, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, which opposed the law.

Kumar said curfew laws such as Baltimore’s tread on the rights of young people, as well the rights of parents to freely raise their children. She compared them to a “show me your papers” situation, in which police could demand identification from people who look young and happen to be out after curfew hours.

“You can’t tell exactly how old somebody is by looking at them,” she said. “So the law really invites police to stop all young-looking people just because they are outside.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Children play on swings at Collington Square Park an hour before a curfew law took effect in Baltimore. Photograph: James Lawler Duggan/Reuters

Curfew exemptions have been made for children and teens who are accompanied by a parent or adult; traveling to or from work; driving on the interstate; or going to a school event or religious function. Young people exercising their right to free speech, religion or assembly are also excused.

Officers must determine when they stop a young person whether he or she is exercising an exemption under the law.

‘This is not about criminalizing young black children’

Some of the strongest criticism of the law has come from those who believe it’s shrouded in discrimination.

“The administration in this city is saying that this is an opportunity to reach children, but what nobody is really talking about is that this is creating yet another negative interaction between law enforcement and what’s going to be predominately low-income and minority youths,” said Al Passarella, research director at Advocates for Children and Youth. Nearly two-thirds of Baltimore’s 620,000 residents are black, according to US census data.

Passarella, along with his colleague Tashea, believe the law will lead police to racially profile young black men in low-income neighborhoods.

Both Passarella and Tashea, as well as Kumar at the ACLU, said they are worried that enforcing the curfew could actually cause a spike in youth arrests as a result of police stopping more young people. The city has rejected such criticism.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Protesters demonstrate before a community meeting with city officials about new youth curfew legislation. Photograph: James Lawler Duggan/Reuters

“This is not about criminalizing young black children, but to reach them before law enforcement,” Rawlings-Blake, the mayor, said during a public forum in July.

The city has said that police will neither arrest nor place handcuffs on the young people detained for breaking the curfew.

In New Orleans, home to perhaps America’s strictest curfew law, a Times-Picayune investigation found that 93% of youths detained at the city’s curfew center in 2011 were black.

The New Orleans law, which was beefed up a few years ago, requires children and teens to be off the streets by 8pm on school nights, and by 8pm every night of the week in the touristy French Quarter.

Josh Perry, the executive director of the Louisiana Center for Children’s Rights, said curfew enforcement in the city has been as youth advocates expected: overblown and discriminatory.

“There is no reason to believe that fewer children are victimized as a result of the curfew laws,” he said. “What they are having an affect on is the ability of the least privileged children in New Orleans to enjoy a normal childhood.”

In response to some of the concerns over discrimination, Baltimore police officers are undergoing training on unbiased policing and youth law enforcement strategies, said Johnese.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Children play basketball at Collington Square Park. Photograph: James Lawler Duggan/Reuters

Minors caught breaking the curfew will be brought by police to designated curfew centers, where officials will interview them and call their parents. If the centers are not open, the child will be taken home or, if necessary, officers can involve protective services, Johnese said.

(To start, the centers are open only on weekends, although Johnese said the city plans to keep them open 24/7.)

Parents or guardians of repeat curfew-breakers can face fines of up to $500. The fines can be waived by the completion of a family counseling session.

Tool or panacea?

The effectiveness of curfew laws is hotly debated.

In general, studies have found little or no correlation between curfews and juvenile crime reduction, but the laws remain wildly popular and exist in most major US cities, including Miami, Dallas, New Orleans, Phoenix and Philadelphia.

“They help keep our children out of harm’s way,” President Bill Clinton said in 1996. “They give parents a tool to impart discipline, respect and rules at an awkward and difficult time in children’s lives.”

Baltimore has had a law in place since the mid-1990s. The original law, which was not heavily enforced, allowed children under 17 to stay out until 11pm on school nights and midnight on weekends. Exact data on the number of curfew violations under this law is not known; the Baltimore police department said it did not keep statistics on curfew violations.



Nadine Connell, an assistant professor of criminology at the University of Texas at Dallas, said curfew laws remain popular because the public and politicians believe they make the streets safer.

“I am not willing to gamble on the lives of our children,” Baltimore’s mayor said during a press conference in support of the law. She said that the response from most residents over the new law had been people saying “Thank you.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Baltimore mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and police commissioner Anthony Batts take questions at a community meeting. Photograph: James Lawler Duggan/Reuters

Connell said that a late-2000s rise in flash mobs seemed to be partly responsible for cities’ renewed interest in curfew laws. A handful of other cities recently considered heightening or imposing a curfew law, including Oakland and Indianapolis.

Delinquency is often spontaneous, Connell said. So it’s possible a curfew law might deter a young person on the brink of delinquency, even if it’s unlikely to halt a violent or dangerous person. She also said curfew laws can keep young people away from older criminals who could stoke delinquent behavior.

But Connell said what was missing from the discussion on curfews was not whether or not they work, but whether they are a cost-efficient method for protecting at-risk youths from falling into crime.

“Curfews are not a one-stop shop,” she said. “They are a tool in a toolbox that needs to include social services, access to education, access to economic improvement and healthcare, because the youth who are most at risk for committing crimes are living in communities that are disenfranchised.

“To suggest that a curfew is going to fix [those problems] is short-sighted and fanciful thinking.”