Teenage Curfews Are Ineffective

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Teenage Curfews are Ineffective
Teenage curfews are ineffective because the same way the death penalty doesn’t completely prevent crime curfews won’t prevent a teen from sneaking out and committing a crime either. That means that we’re essentially wasting money on police enforcement to make sure that teenagers are not committing crimes when studies show that if anything the crime rate has went up since more curfews were put into place. “A study by researchers at the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice looked at a variety of curfews enforced throughout California from 1978 to 1996 and determined that counties that had strict curfews did not see a decrease in youth crime greater than those counties without such curfews.” (Are Teen Curfews Effective." Teen Curfews Should Not Be Supported). Teenagers that are properly supervised by parents are not likely to be out in the late hours of the night, or early morning. They will be occasionally influenced by unruly teens to join them, to go to a party, or hang out. As a teenager it’s clear that not every one of my peers are breaking curfew because they want to be out late but in many cases teenagers are out at night running from a broken home, doing their best to survive and maybe even to the point where they are in the search for food. When there is a curfew in place those teenagers running from that broken home usually know what to do to avoid police enforcement and at that point police officers are essentially pointless in that case. None of that is unrealistic and as a country that should be more of an issue than a teenager coming home from the movies at 12:15pm. If and when the police do catch a teenager out past their curfew hour in many experiences they will just question the teenager. Many teens are running away from an abusive home. Police could be more useful by helping those runaway teenagers instead of punishing them. While it is only in certain areas that this is possible but some teenage girls and...
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