America's War On Teens Out At Night
May 29, 2016 10:33 PM   Subscribe

Between truancy and curfew laws teens can only legally be outside a few hours a day. In the US, the only country with teen curfew laws, millions have been arrested since the 90s for simply walking outside at night, with no strong evidence pointing to a reduction in crime.
posted by blankdawn (53 comments total) 29 users marked this as a favorite
 
How have savvy lawyers not gotten these thrown out as unconstitutional? You're walking outside, and an officer stops you without any probable cause. You're not required to furnish an ID or state your age, so you're now being arrested for appearing underage?
posted by explosion at 10:41 PM on May 29, 2016 [5 favorites]


/scrolls down until he hits the bit about the law being applied in a selective and racist manner.

Yup.
posted by Artw at 10:44 PM on May 29, 2016 [43 favorites]


In the US, the only country with teen curfew laws

um
posted by juv3nal at 10:54 PM on May 29, 2016 [4 favorites]


Both the Guardian and the op suggest that this is a uniquely American phenomenon, but this is refuted by literally ten seconds of googling.

I have no idea how to feel about Journalism anymore.
posted by Tyrant King Porn Dragon at 11:07 PM on May 29, 2016 [29 favorites]


I appreciate the extra research.

I will note that the curfews mentioned in Canada and Iceland are for 16 and under while the US law is for 18, and the UK law mentioned includes this caveat "the High Court ruled in one particular case that the law did not give the police a power of arrest."

I would be curious to see how much the laws are enforced in Canada and Iceland.
posted by blankdawn at 11:10 PM on May 29, 2016 [4 favorites]


Also the data they're referencing lumps loitering and curfew violations together.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 11:14 PM on May 29, 2016 [1 favorite]


My son is currently attending junior high school in Japan. He leaves for school at 7:15AM; classes end at 3:30, and then he attends clubs until 6:30PM, every day (Sunday is a half day). When not in school he is required by school rules to be at home. If there is any free time, say, on Sunday afternoons, he is not permitted to go to the mall without a parent being present.

So this curfew thing is not just in the States.

BTW, my son, who goes to school in Canada as well, just loves JHS in Japan. He's really thriving.
posted by My Dad at 11:26 PM on May 29, 2016 [3 favorites]


How have savvy lawyers not gotten these thrown out as unconstitutional? You're walking outside, and an officer stops you without any probable cause.

IANAL, but conveniently, since the curfew laws are in effect, and if the subject appears (in the officer's opinion) to be underage, and therefore may be violating the law, that seems to pretty much seal the deal for probable cause. Not to mention the various possible 'suspicious behaviors' that the subject might also perform that the officer could cite, for example, 'sudden changes in behavior upon the subject(s) noticing police presence' that could be anything from changes in body language, stance, gait, or any effort that appears to the officer to be evasive.

It's also possible that they may be classified as something other than a simple formal arrest - perhaps some variant of 'in custody' - especially since they are not being directly transported to the station for processing, but are sent to the B&G club, and that might be a situation where laws and rulings regarding 'normal' arrest procedures may not entirely apply.
posted by chambers at 11:31 PM on May 29, 2016 [2 favorites]


When not in school he is required by school rules to be at home.

I have lived in Japan for over a year, I have lived outside the US for over 4, and yet my brain still cannot comprehend why and how schools get to make rules about what kids do when they're not there (or on the way there or on the way back, I suppose - some schools in the US restrict those bits.) What if I am perfectly happy for my kid to go to the mall by himself? What is the school going to do, kick him out because mom said OK? Ugh it just seems so odd to me.
posted by gloriouslyincandescent at 11:33 PM on May 29, 2016 [12 favorites]


@My Dad

"When not in school he is required by school rules to be at home."

Wow that sounds absolutely horrible. Then again I work with Japanese guys who told me they went to bars after high school classes and no one cared...

Also work with Koreans who say they send their elementary age kids to school in Seoul by themselves on the subway.
posted by blankdawn at 11:34 PM on May 29, 2016 [1 favorite]


My son is currently attending junior high school in Japan. He leaves for school at 7:15AM; classes end at 3:30, and then he attends clubs until 6:30PM, every day (Sunday is a half day). When not in school he is required by school rules to be at home. If there is any free time, say, on Sunday afternoons, he is not permitted to go to the mall without a parent being present.

So this curfew thing is not just in the States.


There's a pretty big difference between school rules governing off-campus behavior and actual laws enforced by police power.
posted by kafziel at 11:45 PM on May 29, 2016 [8 favorites]


Iceland-

"The laws are as follows:
From September 1st to May 1st children aged 12 and younger can stay out until 8 pm.
Children aged 13- 16 can stay out until 10 pm."

-From the Iceland Monitor (hmm)

My parents were more strick than that let alone the police.
posted by clavdivs at 11:54 PM on May 29, 2016 [3 favorites]


As for the school rules in Japan thing, not to derail, but there are tons of rules at every school here. The school I'm at (only until tomorrow, thank Glob) says that students may not use any form of social media, no facebook, no Instagram, certainly no Line. And when they walk to school, they must form a single file line so as not to inconvenience people trying to get to work. Trust me, just because someone made a rule doesn't mean anyone follows it.
posted by Ghidorah at 12:31 AM on May 30, 2016 [10 favorites]


"They hate us for our freedom"
posted by Dysk at 1:00 AM on May 30, 2016 [5 favorites]


Well if other countries do it it's okay then. That's a relief.
posted by markr at 2:31 AM on May 30, 2016 [8 favorites]


In addition to school rules there are also official government curfews in Tokyo and other prefectures regarding teenagers. In Tokyo people under 18 aren't allowed to be out after 11pm, for example. There are also more specific regulations that pertain to game arcades, karaoke facilities and movie theaters.

The article's headline is misleading, although the context for the quote "“It’s insane. No other country does this” might refer to the millions of arrests, not the actual curfew laws.
posted by Umami Dearest at 2:36 AM on May 30, 2016 [2 favorites]


The rules in Iceland clavdivs quoted sound like they only care about the curfew during the school year. So that doesn't sound so much like a crime prevention strategy and more a parental 'get a good nights sleep before school' strategy.

(It's probably good I didn't grow up in Iceland as I would've been the seriously uncool kid. My bedtime was 7:30pm even after I was 12. There was certainly no running around the streets at that time!)
posted by kitten magic at 3:15 AM on May 30, 2016 [1 favorite]


Both the Guardian and the op suggest that this is a uniquely American phenomenon, but this is refuted by literally ten seconds of googling.

It may not be a uniquely American phenomenon, but unlike most other countries (and like only a handful of countries in whose company we would not ordinarily want to be lumped in terms of brutality and harshness of criminal laws), we take the law (especially penal law) and ramp it up to its furthest plausible extremes. That's not exactly something to cheer about.
posted by blucevalo at 4:34 AM on May 30, 2016 [4 favorites]


“This is an important way of helping kids stay safe and stay out of trouble,” said San Diego city councilmember Marti Emerald. “If we can help one child in their struggle then I think that we have to say the program is at least a partial success.”

Right you are San Diego city concilmember Marti Emerald -- that is, unless the teen's home is unsafe and troubled -- or they are hurting, and lonely, and need to see a friend before they leap their young way out of their skin -- or if they love stars, and hunger to watch them unimpeded by light pollution -- or, or, or, or.

This is not hyperbole: I would have straight up murdered myself if I hadn't found a friend to plot escape from the variously violent and oppressive doldrums of an American teen dwelling inside the warm embrace of collapsing families and laissez-faire capitalism. They -- and the music and art and stars we thought we loved alone, until we found each other -- saved our lives.

I despise curfew laws for kids. Really, look past SD's list of no-nos to see what it is they find perfectly peachy for children: it's fine if you're running an errand for your parents (deadbeat or no), cool if you want to be out all night working (because it's not enough to be a two-income family with five jobs apiece, we need to get the kids in on it too), awesome if you're out playing b-ball at church (the poor we will always have with us, so pardon the oligarchy for churning out more), and fabu if you're out defending your First Amendment (with what time? and who with?) -- but make sure you young citizens do so without stopping. Do it daily, every day of the most hot-blooded time of your life without stopping for so much as a biological function because it's easier to rule machines than people, so by all means CURFEW. No more inconvenient social decay for us!

How much more pressure does the ruling class suppose it can apply before the rest of humanity completely and irrevocably loses their shit?
posted by melissa may at 4:57 AM on May 30, 2016 [24 favorites]


How much more pressure does the ruling class suppose it can apply before the rest of humanity completely and irrevocably loses their shit?

Quite a lot, seeing as they own the companies we slave work for, the coffee shops we relax in, the holiday companies we go on holiday with, the energy companies which supply our overpriced energy, the water companies that supply our overpriced water, the media companies that tell us what to think, the phone companies we use to communicate, the car companies that make our cars, the internet companies we use for surfing, the governments that rule over us and the spy agencies that spy on us. And they make a fat profit out of all of this, while we are overworked, exhausted wage-slaves, eking out a meagre existence at the very bottom, struggling to keep our heads above water.
posted by marienbad at 5:36 AM on May 30, 2016 [7 favorites]


I was in hs in the early 70's, and we had curfew laws back then, too. They were enacted by municipalities. The local tv stations would start their 11 o'clock news by announcing "It's 11 o'clock. Do you know where your kids are?"

............
“This is an important way of helping kids stay safe and stay out of trouble,” said San Diego city councilmember Marti Emerald. “If we can help one child in their struggle then I think that we have to say the program is at least a partial success.”

The thousands of dollars paid in fines has nothing to do with it, right?
posted by Thorzdad at 5:40 AM on May 30, 2016 [4 favorites]


I was in hs in the early 70's, and we had curfew laws back then, too. They were enacted by municipalities. The local tv stations would start their 11 o'clock news by announcing "It's 11 o'clock. Do you know where your kids are?"

yes, i remember that - and they had curfew laws in the 60s and probably long before that - and i'm sure they were used to clamp down on minorities back then, too
posted by pyramid termite at 6:05 AM on May 30, 2016 [2 favorites]


At least in San Diego, it smacked of a total vote grab. Screw over the non-voting population and throw a bone to the "get off my lawn" jerks at the same time. There's no downside.
posted by LionIndex at 6:18 AM on May 30, 2016 [2 favorites]


Military brat here, US military bases had teen curfews way back in the 80s. We couldn't be out after midnight, although as a practical matter that just meant we went home at midnight, sneaked back out at 12:10, and were just very careful making our way back to the party and then home.

There was that one time my dad was already up when I came in the front door at 4 AM. He looked at me and said, "Be quiet, if you wake up your mother you are screwed." And that was the last we ever spoke of it.
posted by COD at 6:55 AM on May 30, 2016 [8 favorites]


Also the data they're referencing lumps loitering and curfew violations together.

To be fair, loitering laws are bullshit, too. How the hell is standing around a crime?

In the aughts Sommerville MA passed a law that made it illegal to loiter while looking like you might be a gang member. Yes, that's right. Illegal to loiter while black or brown.

I'm so glad I'm not a teenager anymore. It kind of sucks inherently with all the angst, but all the bullshit we put them through (HS itself, nevermind all this other stuff), just makes it worse and I swear it must be even harder now then it was when I was a teen, what with parents' and schools' ability to monitor everything online and tracks kids on their cell phones etc. etc.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 7:13 AM on May 30, 2016 [12 favorites]


The framing of this is all wrong. Criminalizing normal behavior and racialized impact are the problems here. Teens being out only a few hours a day is not. A few hours a day is a lot of time.
posted by yeolcoatl at 8:15 AM on May 30, 2016 [2 favorites]


The Canadian law looks like it fines the parents, not criminally charging the teens.
posted by bonobothegreat at 8:49 AM on May 30, 2016


The framing of this is all wrong. Criminalizing normal behavior and racialized impact are the problems here. Teens being out only a few hours a day is not. A few hours a day is a lot of time.

This. The authorities have no problem with a teenager being on the street if the teenager is off in service of other people whether it be your parents or a place of employment. The authorities are just criminalizing leisure.
posted by Talez at 8:53 AM on May 30, 2016 [1 favorite]


Back in the early nineties one of the towns near us (Hodgkins, IL) would sound the air-raid sirens at 10pm to indicate the start of their curfew time. There was a short-lived controversy but the village government won out. So we'd hear air-raid sirens every evening. Without fail.

Duck and cover, kids.
posted by DrSawtooth at 9:07 AM on May 30, 2016 [1 favorite]


People should get the Nerdfighters and Harry Potter Alliance and Invisible Children

That is genius yet highly fraught, like so much (dis)organized resistance in this country. I still remember seeing Red Hand houses (in neighborhoods way nicer than mine to be sure) and asking about it, only to learn that wow! If I was scared or in trouble as a young girl -- in my brief sojourns to clean suburban heavens -- I had safe places to run! Then some monster(s) used the program to *lure in* vulnerable kids to actually redden their hands with and...oh.

So that was it for Red Hands. What a world, what a world.
posted by melissa may at 10:54 AM on May 30, 2016 [1 favorite]


And look, I was about to expand on Red Hands so went to google more about it and look, we already answered my damn question back in 2010.

Which is precisely the problem with trying to replace a decent social safety net with well-meant ad-hoc community/charitably-based service. Predators flock to those very "safe spaces" for free and easy pickings of troubled youth. There's little or no sociological, historical, economical, or indeed any sort of formal academic study of their design and impact -- and once gone, they vanish beneath the sea of violence in which we swim, so frightened and ignorant. Thus are we doomed to repeat ourselves over and over, in histories that are nightmares from which no one can awaken. Hmmm, perhaps it's time to rewatch Battlestar Galactica ('04; the '78 version is more the kind of TV I grew up narcotizing in front of when too scared to leave the house) so thanks, inchoate rage -- that was a useful impulse. For once.
posted by melissa may at 11:28 AM on May 30, 2016 [1 favorite]


Both the Guardian and the op suggest that this is a uniquely American phenomenon, but this is refuted by literally ten seconds of googling.

Do these other countries put kids in handcuffs, haul them down to the pokey, keep them in handcuffs until their parents arrive, and then send them off to criminal court?
posted by JackFlash at 11:50 AM on May 30, 2016 [2 favorites]


Oh, and do these other countries organize task forces specifically to find juveniles and send police off with the exhortation "Happy hunting!"
posted by JackFlash at 12:27 PM on May 30, 2016 [2 favorites]


To be fair, loitering laws are bullshit, too. How the hell is standing around a crime?

In theory, loitering statutes only apply to impeding other people - blocking the sidewalk entirely, harassing passers-by, and such.

In practice, it means "you're black and we didn't find drugs on you".
posted by kafziel at 1:30 PM on May 30, 2016 [6 favorites]


I'm remembering a friend of mine who was fined for breaking curfew while pulling the garbage can out to the curb. Since he was standing in the street, he was technically not on his property.

This was Cicero, Illinois, less than a year before the Mayor was indicted for embezzlement.
posted by dinty_moore at 1:36 PM on May 30, 2016 [1 favorite]


I would be curious to see how much the laws are enforced in Canada

20 years back it was pretty much a "go home, ya good for nothing punks!" and then you'd pretend to go home until the cop was out of sight and then you'd smoke cigarettes and hang out some more. These days I don't know but I'd be angry if it was if it was anything different.

I mean how about we arrest teenagers only if they are committing an actual crime where someone or something is affected adversely, and not just being out past bedtime? It just seems like every kid would be out past midnight when we were kids. The second last night of high school it was tradition for everyone to grab a box of beer and wander around the neighbourhood and the woods literally all night and come back the next morning to grab our report cards, all looking like complete disasters. In my old neighbourhood I suspect you'd have to fly in cops from elsewhere who could enforce a rule like this and not be hypocrites (not that being a hypocrite bothers them, mind you).
posted by Hoopo at 1:48 PM on May 30, 2016 [2 favorites]


How have savvy lawyers not gotten these thrown out as unconstitutional? You're walking outside, and an officer stops you without any probable cause. You're not required to furnish an ID or state your age, so you're now being arrested for appearing underage?
As an 18-year-old, I filed a lawsuit against my town of Charlottesville, VA on precisely these grounds, in Schleifer et al v. City of Charlottesville. We (me, my father, my sister, a couple of friends and their parents) were represented by the ACLU of Virginia. We lost the first case, lost on appeal to the federal circuit, by a 2–1 vote, and then the SCOTUS refused to take our case. Our suit has since been cited in 27 other rulings, mostly for ill. So if you wanna know how savvy lawyers haven't gotten these thrown out as unconstitutional, read up on our case.

Relatedly, I made a small fortune at the time by selling T-shirts reading "I'm Exercising My First Amendment Rights." Any kid wearing that shirt could not be arrested, as that was (and still is) one of the exemptions in the law. Basically, the law was written so that middle-class white kids like me could do whatever they wanted, but black kids would be arrested. If you could afford $10 to buy a T-shirt from me, you were in the clear.
posted by waldo at 5:58 PM on May 30, 2016 [20 favorites]


During what I believe was the second-to-last old style Spring Break allowed to be held in Palm Springs, my buddy and I would walk along the main drags in our spiky mohawks and offensively-adorned clothing.

When 10pm rolled around one night and cops were arresting people for curfew on the street and taking them to some school classroom for their parents to pick them up, we were nearly the only freaks, so naturally we got to make the trip. There were very few preppy frat boys and girls in that room.
posted by rhizome at 6:56 PM on May 30, 2016


How hard would it be for the teenagers to officially employ each other? Jack works for Jill, Jill works for Jack, they pay each other identical wages and have paystubs to prove it...
posted by El Mariachi at 12:40 AM on May 31, 2016


@ yeolcoatl

"Racialized impact [is] the problem here. Teens being out only a few hours a day is not. A few hours a day is a lot of time."

Disagree with the implication that if whites were affected more it would somehow be okay. The government cannot decide how many hours being out of the house in a day is "enough," or which hours those might be.

@ melissa may

"the teen's home is unsafe and troubled -- or they are hurting, and lonely, and need to see a friend before they leap their young way out of their skin -- or if they love stars, and hunger to watch them unimpeded by light pollution -- or, or, or, or."

EXACTLY.

Here is an extreme counter-example... I did some work in jungle communities in Central America. I regularly saw children (who looked to be as young as 6 or 7) out unsupervised at night, sometimes far from home, sometimes in canoes, sometimes on horseback... their parents responded with confusion to suggestions that they shouldn't be allowed out.

The kids were happier and harder working by far than the US average despite extreme hardships and chronic physical ailments. The freedom to roam outdoors seemed like a major part of their coping, to the extent that no one wanted to move to a city, in spite of better wages, for fear of losing that mobility (not to curfew laws but to threats of real street violence at a level no one in the US can imagine, and which incidentally, have not been halted through curfews or "mano dura" mass arrests of young people with tattoos, etc).

They didn't even phrase it as not wanting to move to the city due to fear of violence, but due to not being able to go out freely when they wanted to. (Among other reasons obviously.)
posted by blankdawn at 1:11 AM on May 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


Is this one of the reasons cruising strips died off?
posted by Beholder at 1:44 AM on May 31, 2016


Racialized impact [is] the problem here. Teens being out only a few hours a day is not. A few hours a day is a lot of time.

Seems to me like you need to clear a higher bar than "a few hours a day is a lot" to justify effectively placing a huge chunk of the population under some form if house arrest or parole for no good reason. These are human beings we're taking about. Our would you not mind if it was you that was only allowed out a few hours a day, on a strict schedule? After all, a few hours is a lot of time.
posted by Dysk at 5:30 AM on May 31, 2016


I would have hated this as a teenager. I was a free range kid, and my high school had an open campus. At a certain point, I really needed to spend time alone driving out to the foothills at the edge of the city at night, or all the way into the mountains. Really did not want to hang out at home with functional alcoholics. A car gave me the freedom to get away.

I always thought my teenage years in the '80s were typically suburban, but in comparison to today it was a wild and reckless era.
posted by krinklyfig at 6:40 AM on May 31, 2016 [4 favorites]


Since one of the First Amendment rights is assembly, does this mean that as long as you are with at least one other person, then you not violating curfew? There is nothing (as far as I know, IANAL) that states the size of an assembly to be considered one. And there's nothing on the page that melissa may linked to that has anything about it. So it basically turns into "kids, don't be alone out at night."

Of course, the first kid to try to use this argument would either be ignored (white) or beaten (not white), so good luck with it.
posted by Hactar at 8:53 AM on May 31, 2016


Since one of the First Amendment rights is assembly, does this mean that as long as you are with at least one other person, then you not violating curfew?
IIRC, in our case, we argued that "the right to peaceably assemble" can be translated, on modern parlance, to "the right to hang out." That didn't go anywhere, but I don't get why.
posted by waldo at 10:28 AM on May 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


Until I was 15, the city I lived in had a 10pm curfew. I even got caught once and had to make up an excuse about not knowing about it/being new in town/living just down the street. Lucky for me that most people didn't lock their doors and there was a convenient house I could wander into pretending it was where I lived. (It was actually a friend's house)

Not that anything other than a call to my parents and short ride home in the back of the cop car would have been involved had I not talked my way out of it. Nobody ever got arrested in the sense of booked into jail for curfew violation, much less prosecuted.

It's not like the curfew ever stopped me from wandering in the streets at night or causing low level mischief. It was nice when I moved elsewhere so I was able to spend my high school years in a city without such a stupid law. Not that I didn't have more than a few interactions with police officers admonishing me that I shouldn't be out at 3 in the morning on a school night, but after failing to develop any reasonable suspicion that I was committing a crime, they sent me on my merry way each time.

Ironically, I did commit far fewer misdemeanors after moving. Apparently being able to wander aimlessly around town provided enough diversion to prevent other mischief.
posted by wierdo at 11:34 PM on May 31, 2016


Blankdawn: in the future, when you quote me with a concern, I would appreciate it if you did not edit my sentence to leave out the immediately preceeding phrase that directly addresses your concern.

Thank you.
posted by yeolcoatl at 9:08 AM on June 1, 2016


If you could also not edit my comments and add your own commentary in a way that makes it look like I'm saying the opposite of what I said, I'd appreciate that too, because other people, like dysk, are only reading your edited quote and are getting the wrong idea.
posted by yeolcoatl at 9:17 AM on June 1, 2016


I was quoting from your original comment actually, not having seen blankdawn's at the time. You know, the one where you said that teens only being out a few hours a day isn't the issue?
posted by Dysk at 9:48 AM on June 1, 2016


Dysk, that's interesting, because the quote you quoted is edited in exactly the same way that blankdawn's is.

I did say that teens being out only a few hours a day isn't the issue. Because a few hours a day is a lot. If we said "teens watch tv for a few hours a day" we wouldn't use "only."

But in the same sentence, which somehow both you and blankdawn misquoted in exactly the same way, I also said that teens being out should NOT be criminalized, which is the exact opposite of the meaning you attributed to me.
posted by yeolcoatl at 5:16 PM on June 1, 2016


I did say that teens being out only a few hours a day isn't the issue. Because a few hours a day is a lot. If we said "teens watch tv for a few hours a day" we wouldn't use "only."

These are not comparable activities. Effective house arrest is not a trivial issue.
posted by Dysk at 5:33 PM on June 1, 2016


For me in another country, this is one of those funny things where America does something that I find incredibly strange, yet because it has been around so long it is accepted by all as either a trifle or just too hard to change.
I am truly gobsmacked at the idea a 17yro could be arrested for peaceably walking the street at 11:10pm. It is clearly absurd. For starters, it is still twilight in summer for a fair part of the USA at that time. The argument, of course, is the law is only enforced on the dark skinned or the criminal or other "trouble makers". But why have the law then? Arrest the criminals for crimes, arrest the people with skin colours that are a problem for that (or, you know, don't be racist)- why the hypocrisy?
For the record, I could have been arrested at least weekly for the years between 15 and 18, but I was largely causing no harm.
My 15yro daughter wants to go to an event that finishes at midnight and will require using public transport to get home. It wouldn't even occur to me whether allowing her should be any business of anybody except her, me and her mother. I kind of feel like a Texan with the government getting all up in my face on something the government, in my view obviously, should have no involvement in.
17years and 11 months kids aren't allowed to walk the street, but a month later they have unfettered access to assault rifles. Extraordinary stuff.
posted by bystander at 4:54 AM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


17years and 11 months kids aren't allowed to walk the street, but a month later they have unfettered access to assault rifles.

I don't think you have to be 18 to own an assault rifle in the US.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 5:05 AM on June 8, 2016


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