Monday, May 30, 2016

Teen Curfews

My sleepy quiet "safe" suburb had a curfew for teens of a certain age. Don't remember precisely, it was probably midnight on weekends and 11pm on weekdays. I don't recall anyone actually getting arrested; I think the standard treatment was to call your pissed off parents so they had to pick you up and then deliver the iron hand of justice themselves (unless you actually snuck out the parents were probably more just pissed off at the hassle, but they couldn't take it out on the cops, so...). Still, what the hell? Why can't I go take a walk at 11pm on a summer night if parents are okay with that. It just reinforced the ideas that as a teen you have no agency, even as you're not that far from being dumped off at college with little supervision, and that the only appropriate place to be is inside your house.

Of course that was no big deal compared to places where curfews really are used to harass teens and speed certain teens into the criminal justice pipeline. Screw up your life by being outside after 10pm. Silly superpredators.