Issue of Youth Curfews

Curfew restrictions extend back many years, and one of the reasons why such restrictions are imposed is the juvenile crime rate. In 1955, the U.S. Department of justice reported that the number of criminal offenses committed by juveniles between 1988 and 1992 had increased 26 percent, reaching nearly 1.5 million cases. The largest increase recorded over that period was for crimes against persons, which rose 56 percent. At the same time, criminal homicide increased by 80 percent to account for 2,500 cases in 1992; forcible rape increased by 27 percent to reach 5,400 cases; robbery rose by 52 percent, to 32,900 cases; and aggravated assault rose 80 percent, to 77,900 cases. In 1992, the typical offende

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ents reporting the most curfew effectiveness may be attributed to the tethering of curfew enforcement to local youth services programming, as well as to a high degree of parental involvement (Crowell 5-6). There is also a downside to the curfew trend, however, even though it is supported more and by everyone from police officers to President Clinton. In American today, more kids are arrested for curfew violations then for any other single category of crime, including all violent crimes combined. The results are not as positive as some of the above statistics might indicate, noting that a "new report by the Justice Policy Institute has found that there's no correlation between heavy enforcement of curfews laws and drops in juvenile crime" (Ziedenberg). Ziedenberg goes on to show why this should have been expected and also why the law of unintended consequences will come into play in the future. He says first that thousands of police officers are spending more time on curfew issues than on fighting street crime. One result will be that the "act of needlessly placing tens of thousands of kids in juvenile detention centers for petty acts of delinquency may scar them for life and create social problems that we might have to deal
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1667
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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