Curfew Laws Have No Connection with Crime

 

It seems almost automatic that several times each year, in Las Vegas and elsewhere, the news media and law enforcement officials focus on teen curfew as still another in a multitude of "magic bullets" aimed at curbing youth crime.  Sunday's article by John Przybys ("Street Wise," Review-Journal, 7/25/99) was typical.  Something was forgotten in the rush to pass judgement on teens that "cruise the strip" or in other ways violate antiquated curfew laws: do curfew laws have any relationship to crime among juveniles?

The answer, based upon many years of research, is simple: no.  The vast majority of crimes committed by juveniles occur during other hours of the day.  Specifically, most crimes by juveniles will occur from roughly after school lets out until around 7 or 8 PM.  One recent study focused on the city of Monrovia, a suburb of Los Angeles. The author of the study, Mike Males (University of California-Irvine), as reported in his excellent book Framing Youth (Common Courage Press, 1999) compared juvenile crimes before and after a new curfew ordinance took effect on October, 1994.  Although it was claimed to be a resounding success by both the press and the police, the facts told a different story.  A comparison was also done with 11 neighboring communities in the Los Angeles area, which had curfew enforcement ranging from "moderately vigorous to zero."  No unusual decline in crime was noted for Monrovia or any other of the cities and towns studied.  What was most interesting, however, is that before and after the new crackdown began, more crimes were committed during non-curfew hours than curfew hours, during the school year.  This last point is crucial and this fact has been noted all over the country for years: crimes by youth drop dramatically during the summer months, when curfew is not as rigorously enforced!  One reason for this is the existence of programs for youth offered during the summer months plus the fact that school is out.

Still another study compared San Francisco and its neighbor San Jose.  San Francisco police stopped enforcing its curfew ordinances. (One reason was that juveniles were being arrested for curfew violations, but nothing else, hence wasting police resources.)  San Jose, in contrast, was engaged in vigorous enforcement of its curfew laws.  The results of the comparison?  Arrest rates for curfew charges virtually disappeared in San Francisco while they jumped dramatically in San Jose (from a mere 4 arrests for curfew between 1990 and 1994 to 585 between 1995 and 1997).  The total arrest rate for juveniles declined in San Francisco by 22%, but increased by 26%. What about total crime (crimes reported to the police) in each city?  In both cities the crime rate declined (by 34% in San Francisco and by 30% in San Jose). Obviously something more than the enforcement of curfew laws was at work here. 

One consistent fact emerges from studies of the enforcement of curfew laws: the majority are enforced against racial minorities.  In the Monrovia study, as Males notes, the enforcement of curfew laws doubled the overall "crime rate" among black and Latino youth as they constituted about 70% of those arrested for curfew violations, double the rate for whites.  This, he says, was due largely to the fact that those not in cars are most likely to be cited; and minority youths are far less likely to have access to cars than white youths.