Source: pastebin.com


With limited exceptions, Washington, DC’s juvenile curfew law prohibits youth 16 and younger from being unaccompanied in public places at night. According to the court findings listed alongside this law in the district code, the curfew was enacted primarily to reduce “the likelihood that minors will become involved in criminal acts . . . during curfew hours”. Reason shows, however, that the youth curfew not only fails to protect minors or prevent juvenile crime, but actively harms our youth and our society.

Youth is a category defined by arbitrary boundaries. It is impossible to reliably distinguish 16 year olds from 17 year olds; one year of age is invisible. Police officers cannot accuse everyone on the streets at night of a possible curfew violation, and the absence of obvious age markers means police officers must make their decisions of who to approach based solely on appearance. Short of visibly marking all minors, selective enforcement of curfew laws is their only possible implementation, the subjectivity of which invites discriminatory racial profiling. Meanwhile, minors who appear older than their age can safely ignore curfew while young-looking adults will be needlessly harassed.

Curfew violations in the District of Columbia are punishable by a maximum $500 fine and 25 hours of community service. Minors who are engaged or are planning to engage in illegal behaviors such as drug dealing or vandalism are already risking far greater penalties and therefore have no motivation to abandon those activities to avoid violating curfew. Youths who are conscientiously law-abiding will obey the curfew at the expense of missing social activities but would have caused no harm had they been allowed outside.

DC’s curfew law puts undue pressure not only on minors, but on the city as a whole. Parents must forbid their children from walking down the street at night or risk a $500 fine. Business owners must call the police if they are aware a youth is on their premises during curfew hours. The curfew is a burden on police officers struggling to prevent real crimes and the amount of paperwork required at each citation is a drain on our already strained budget.

Most importantly, curfew laws blatantly violate the civil liberties of those it affects. The DC curfew has twice been struck down by federal court on the grounds that it is unconstitutional. In 1989, U.S. District Judge Charles Richey banned the city from enforcing the curfew, declaring that it "subjects the district's juveniles to virtual house arrest each night". In the 1996 lawsuit Hutchins v. District of Columbia, the U.S. District Court granted an injunction against enforcement of the curfew, ruling that "it is a well-settled legal principle that the right to free movement is a fundamental right”.

When applied to youth and adults alike, curfew laws have long been seen as a symptom of totalitarianism. By forcing our youth to accept and obey such laws, we are alienating them from positive civic engagement and teaching our future voting public to passively tolerate government oppression. By disempowering our youth, we are not only committing injustice against the 20% of our population comprised of minors, we are sabotaging our future as the capital of a nation.



Unless otherwise stated, views expressed in this article are those of the author alone.





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