Teen Curfews Should Not Be Enforced

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Teen Curfews Should Not be Enforced Is it right for a teen to be charged with a crime just to be out on the street? Many cities enforce curfews on teens between the hours of ten p.m. and six a.m. because officials believe it lowers crimes. City curfews should not be imposed on teens because most youth crimes are committed between three p.m. to six p.m., any teen can make up an excuse, and police effort should be placed on more important crimes. Most teen-related crimes occur during the day. Research shows that most crime is committed during the time afterschool when teens are alone and parents are at work. There is no proof yet that youth curfews actually lower teen crime. Overall crime rate in the United States is dropping, so the decrease in teen crime is to be expected. When curfews are placed, crime is just moved from one time of the day to another (Do Curfews Punish Innocent Teens?). This is an ineffective way to stop crime, because officials are focusing on the wrong time of day. …show more content…

Cities that enforce curfews allow children who have a job, activity, or “emergency errand” to be out during the curfews. Any teen could lie and make up a plausible reason if a police approaches them. City officials can also only monitor so many areas, so it would be very difficult to try to control a whole city in the nighttime (Pompilio). This makes curfews very hard to enforce and many people decide to ignore

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