I understand (or think I understand) why daytime curfew laws seem so attractive to cities as they periodically take up the issue and find themselves arousing the concerns of local homeschoolers who don’t want their children harassed every time they are allowed out of the house during school hours.
At the same time, however, they don’t make much sense to me. Take the arguments cited by a recent Wall Street Journal article as examples:
The law currently allows police to pick up truants, he said, but all officers can do is take them to a nearby school. Wall Street Journal
I don’t really see the problem with that. A child skips school, goes wherever truants go to hang out and gets picked up by an officer. If that is all that the child was doing wrong, returning him or her to the school for the administration to deal with seems highly appropriate. Why put further burdens on an already overburdened police force?
If the curfew is extended, the police still plan to return truants to schools, but they say the added clout of a fine will help them combat the problem. Ibid.
If we really think a fine is going to dissuade truants from being truant, why not just afix a fine to truancy rather than impose a curfew? Maybe I’m missing something somewhere, but don’t schools keep attendance? And records of unexcused absences? They send out truancy officers to track down kids, so would it really be that hard to impose fines without a curfew?
Elba Garcia, a dentist who serves as chairman of the council’s public-safety committee, said the ban will help the police combat crimes that are “associated with truancy,” especially daylight burglaries and car break-ins. Ibid.
Aren’t daylight burglaries and car break-ins already illegal? I would think that with or without a daylight curfew, a police officer should be able to arrest a burglar and not just return him or her to the school. It looks like they already have their hands full with these delinquents.
While juveniles account for only 6% of arrests in Dallas, they represent 22% of the 868 people arrested for burglary in 2008, said Lt. Robert Hinton of the Dallas Police Department, and more than half were picked up during school hours. Ibid.
I know that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and all that, but I think picking up every juvenile on the street and returning them to school or home might be more likely to turn the police force into a very expensive youth escort service. I’m not convinced that monitoring the innocent goes terribly far in apprehending the guilty. And it seems some who study such things agree.
Ken Adams, a professor of criminal justice at the University of Central Florida, said curfews generally are popular because “they promise to be effective and inexpensive, and we like that combination.” But he and others who study juvenile justice say there is little evidence these laws reduce crime or prevent minors from being the victims of crimes. Ibid. emphasis mine
So why bother? Because it’s cheap? It appears you get what you pay for on this program, in addition to angering your local homeschool groups. And not a single thing is done or even discussed to address the root causes of the truancy.
Maybe unrelated, but I wonder reading the article what the intended purpose of public education would be… educating the child, or keeping him off the streets so he doesn’t break into cars?
Is public school just free childcare for teens? It seems to be what the article implies IMO, which is frankly an insult to ps educators in tough neighbourhoods.
Great point: The problems are already illegal and we should already have records on the “problem” students… so we really shouldn’t need anything more [smile].
And Mrs. C is absolutely right: In this case, “school” would better be defined as “babysitting.”
~Luke
I hadn’t thought about what this sounds like in terms of what the school is for. Excellent point. At the risk of being completely misunderstood, I’ll muse that maybe the traditional classroom setting isn’t the best place for young people who would rather by burglarizing houses than learning geometry. They, too, deserve a decent education, but the current system is already failing them and chances are they are hindering the system for benefiting those who are trying to get an education.
I’d prefer the time and money be spent on looking into the causes of the problem and seeing what alternative programs can be set up.
Some good thinking here, kudos to Dana AND Mrs. C!
Dana, I must be in an odd place today. Because as I read you post and the comments that followed, I wondered, “Since when US do we limit their freedoms because they might commit a crime?”
This law, had it been in force where I live, would have meant that Marissa couldn’t work outside the home during school hours. Even if she had completed her classwork and even if, while in public school, she spent several hours a day on “job training.” Essentially, cleaning the school for free while being “supervised” by a para.
Following Julie’s concerns and from what I’ve been able to dig up, when curfews are contested, they’re struck down as unconstitutional.
http://www.eduwrit.com/blog/?p=1018
Daytime curfews seem to have really hit the big time since NCLB came about and funding is tied to truancy/dropout rates.
Rockford, IL started daytime curfews in 2006? (with no apparent resistance from local homeschoolers) and their truancy rate was rising again.
http://www.rrstar.com/homepage/x1925666538
“But a year after Rockford schools teamed with the city of Rockford, Winnebago County and the United Way in a unique anti-truancy partnership, a mid-year report shows truancy — a predictor of criminal behavior and high school dropouts — is once again on the rise.”
Expensive (for the city) and sorry results from all this municipal managing of school affairs are not unusual from what I’ve seen.
As far as homeschoolers are concerned, a Lincoln, IL alderperson suggested badges for homeschoolers when they go out and about during school hours. (Lincoln has daytime curfew) Rockford’s school district office invites homeschoolers in to get ids to ‘protect’ them. (IL homeschoolers don’t need to report or register with the school district.)
So it’s inefficient double dips into the tax payers’ pockets and takes away law-abiding citizens’ right to walk the streets.
Government service(s) that don’t seem to solve the real problem, but rather chase down the symptoms of hating ‘education’.
The Co-op Group (where they provide classes for homeschoolers on Fridays) has been posting fliers about this curfew.
No one is happy about it.
I know I sure don’t want to be questioned by the authorities everytime I leave the house!
I thought they job of the police was to protect the citizens by keeping criminals off the streets. It is the job of parents to make sure their children are in school or at home during school hours, and to be responsible for their actions, not the police for goodness sake!
As a homeschooler, I am wary each time I venture out during school hours. Thankfully, I have never been stopped by the police, but still…
Interesting article, glad you shared it with your readers.
Why do they need daytime curfew to deal with truancy? It is simple. School is in session today at X time. Kid enrolled in said school is not in school then they are truant.
I don’t get the need for a new law.
I linked to this article in a blog I wrote about the Dallas Daytime Curfew. Just thought I’d let you know!
While it is seldom mentioned out loud, I think that daytime curfews have more than a tint of a racist attitude to them.
My MIL was a township trustee in a midwestern township that was considering nighttime curfews. When the proposed rule came up in trustees meetings, she asked about kids who had jobs or sports or dance or other perfectly fine reasons to be out past 11 o’clock. She was told by the police chief that they could tell who was a problem and who wasn’t and that they wouldn’t give a hard time to those who were on legitimate business.
Now one of two things is going on if the police chief has the ability to make this determination. Either he is basing it on the actions of the kids (vandalism, loitering, panhandling, shop lifting, attempting to buy alcohol and cigarettes under age) or he is basing it on outside characteristics. The actions are generally already crimes and should just be treated as such without some additional crime of violating curfew. Outside characteristics, be it race or ethnic or dress, are NOT reasons to consider someone a menace.
My MIL was the only trustee to vote against the nighttime curfew. This was one reason that she lost the backing of her party in this supposedly non-partisan position. A couple years later the new crop of trustees voted in a daytime curfew as well. To my knowledge, this has yet to be challenged and struck down.
Interesting, Sebastian.
I could easily see that happening in many places, and believe it does.
These fines ($500) for some, are money makers, but don’t solve the truancy problem. Kids don’t want to be in school. No surprise there.
This is from the city of Rockford’s Educational Initiatives powerpoint. (Rockford has daytime curfew):
“Too many of our children are arrested
* In 2007, almost 4.5 times more Black youth were arrested than graduated.
* Almost twice as many Hispanic youth were arrested than graduated.”
Rockford’s county (Winnebago) is on the poverty watch list. Where does the city/county go from there? It appears that these kids will have one more arrest on their record: truancy.