Declaring a juvenile curfew to keep troublemaking teenagers off the streets is a summer ritual in many American cities. This year Austin, Texas decided not to sound the alarm.
“We looked at the evidence and decided it was time to discard the curfew law,” Austin Police Department’s assistant chief, Troy Gay, told The Marshall Project. “It wasn’t making an impact on juvenile victimization.”
The evidence was a report drafted by a consortium of community groups that banded together to challenge Austin’s curfew law in 2017. Police Chief Brian Manley was persuaded and asked the City Council to rescind the law. A voluminous body of research has cast strong doubts on the claims that juvenile curfew laws prevent victimization or reduce juvenile crime, but these findings have received scant attention from policy makers or police.
A systematic review of research literature on juvenile curfew programs was published in 2016 by the Campbell Collaboration, a nonprofit that synthesizes research studies for policy-makers. Campbell examined over 7,000 studies on juvenile curfews and synthesized the 12 most rigorous studies.
As the report stated, “evidence suggests that juvenile curfews are ineffective at reducing crime and victimization. The average effect on juvenile crime during curfew hours was slightly positive — that is a slight increase in crime — and close to zero for crime during all hours. Similarly, juvenile victimization also appeared unaffected by the imposition of a curfew ordinance.”
(Read more: CitiesSpeak)