Are curfews effective against crime??

America On Curfews
Even Small, Quiet Towns Are Clamping Down on Teens.
by Sue Anne Pressley
Washington Post Staff Writer.

This article talks about how in Clifton, Texas they passed a new law for teens. Everyone under 17 years old must be in by 11 p.m. and midnight on weekends, unless you are with an adult or have a good reason to be out. Penalties begin with a warning and can lead up to as much as a $500 fine against parents. "What's happening is we're punishing them like adults but treating them like adults." says Louis Rhodes, executive director of the Arizona ACLU. A 15 year old girl named Siri Kvalvik was playing on swings in a park a few yards from one of the girls homes. Her parents gave her permission to stay out until midnight. But Siri was arrested by police after they called her mother asking for the girl’s whereabouts. Her mother could not pinpoint that her daughter had drifter from her friends house to the swing sets. "I asked for my rights to be read three or four times," says Siri, who was photographed and fingerprinted, a practice Phoenix police have since halted. "But they said because I was a kid, I didn't have rights." At the juvenile courts found Siri guilty automatically declaring her incorrigible, meaning legally that she is beyond rehabilitation, a decision the Kvalvik's are appealing.