Out of Sync
A Curfew Is No Answer to Teenage Crime in D.C.
By Sadiq Reza

The District of Columbia's curfew law aims at one of the city's most pressing
problems its disturbingly high juvenile crime rates. Between 1987 and
1995, juvenile arrests for aggravated assault increased by nearly 90 percent,
for murder by 157 percent, and for carrying a dangerous weapon by 282.7
percent. Enacted in September 1995, the law allowed the arrest of anyone
under the age of 17 who was on the streets without adult supervision during
the restricted hours. A federal judge ruled the law unconstitutional in
October 1996; last Monday, three appellate judges heard the District's
appeal. That same day, the D.C. City Council moved to make the curfew law
(which otherwise would have expired this month) permanent, to allow the legal
battle to continue.

My experience as a defense attorney for juveniles suggests that the District
should not be pushing so hard to reinstate the curfew law. While few people
would argue that children should be free to wander the streets of D.C.
aimlessly after midnight, the actual benefits of the law are at best dubious.
Police reported that their enforcement was lax, and District officials cannot
prove the curfew actually reduced juvenile crime or victimization. If my
cases are typical, they suggest that the law has little effect. And by
focusing on the curfew, District officials and residents may be blinding
themselves to real solutions to the juvenile crime problem.

A review of the dozens of cases that I handled in D.C. juvenile court between
December 1993 and May 1995 before the law went into effect reveals that
the law was based on several false assumptions. Here's what a review of my
cases shows:

Most of the crimes did not occur during the hours the curfew is in effect.
The law set curfew hours of 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. Sundays through Thursdays, and
12:01 a.m. to 6 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. In July and August, the 12:01
a.m. starting time applied every day of the week. About 21 percent of the
children under the age of 17 whom I represented between 1993 and 1995 were
arrested for crimes alleged to have occurred during those hours. But more
arrests 29 percent were for incidents that occurred between 8 p.m. and
the start of curfew time. The remaining 50 percent were for incidents that
occurred between late morning and 8 p.m. These numbers indicate that more
juvenile crimes occur by day than by night.

The curfew would not have prevented the most violent juvenile crime. To
justify the curfew, the District relied heavily on national statistics that
indicate escalations in violent crime by juveniles in recent years. But only
two of the seven juvenile firstdegree murder cases that I handled happened
during curfew hours. And in both of those cases, an adult was alleged to have
been the shooter. The remaining five murders occurred between 8 p.m. and the
start of curfew time. One carjacking and one robbery fell within the curfew
hours, but six other robberies did not. Two shootings (or "assaults with
intent to kill") happened during curfew hours, but an equal number occurred
in broad daylight. None of the remaining violent crimes assaults with
dangerous weapons, assaults on police officers, kidnapping happened during
curfew hours; half of them happened by day. All alleged incidents of forced
sexual contact also fell outside curfew hours, as did all charges of gun
possession (without other charges), which arose when students were found with
guns at school. These numbers indicate that violent crime by juveniles occurs
no more during curfew hours than it does at other times of the day.

The curfew would not have prevented juveniles from becoming victims of crime.
Although I represented juveniles charged with committing crimes and not
victims, a quarter of my cases did involve juvenile victims. Of these, only 7
percent fell within the curfew hours. Sixtyfour percent, on the other hand,
fell between morning and 8 p.m. These statistics support evidence that
juveniles are at the greatest risk of being victimized in the afternoons
after school rather than during curfew hours. The District has presented no
evidence to the contrary about D.C. juvenile victims.

It is clear to me from this review that the curfew law aspires to much more
than it can achieve. Opponents of the law argue that it is unnecessarily
restrictive, and that the effort to prevent juvenile crime by imposing a
curfew is equivalent to reducing traffic jams by eliminating cars, or ending
plane crashes by closing airports. The law's greatest harm, however, may not
be its restrictiveness, but its deceptiveness. In place of the fallacies, my
cases suggest the following facts:

First, guns and drugs lie at the heart of juvenile crime in the District.
Nearly 50 percent of the children under the age of 17 whom I represented, and
more than 40 percent of those under 18, were arrested for incidents that
involved guns. While only a relatively small number of arrests (15 percent)
were for drug crimes, nearly half of my clients for whom test results were
available had marijuana, and occasionally PCP, in their urine at the time of
their arrest. Others admitted smoking marijuana, or their urine revealed its
use in later tests. The District's own statistics put the rate of drug use by
juveniles who are arrested at 59 percent in 1994.

Second, juveniles who are arrested often have problems at school. About
onefifth of my juvenile clients had confirmed or suspected learning
disabilities. Another onefifth were no longer attending school; some had
dropped out, and others had simply been absent for months. Nearly half of the
clients who were enrolled in school were old for their grade, suggesting they
had repeated one or more grades.

And third, very few juveniles who are arrested have had a job of any sort
part time, summer or other. Most of those who did had gained that experience
through a government program the District's summer jobs program, the Job
Corps or school programs.

District officials cannot avoid hard facts like these. Nor can they ignore
the more successful efforts many other cities have made to reduce juvenile
crime. New Orleans, which implemented a curfew in 1994, combined the law with
a comprehensive jobs and summer youth program, increasing the number of city
summer camps from 17 to 41, and swimming pools from four to 14. The city also
created 1,300 new summer jobs for youths and obtained $1.8 million in federal
grants for AmeriCorps and Youth Action Corps programs. Although the
effectiveness of the curfew is not clear, the idea of providing greater
opportunities and activities for youngsters has paid off in other parts of
the country.

According to a 1994 study by the San Franciscobased Trust for Public Land,
when the city of Phoenix kept facilities for basketball, swimming, volleyball
and dancing open until 2 a.m. in the summertime, reports of juvenile crime
dropped by as much as 55 percent. (The reports rose again when the facilities
returned to regular hours in the fall.) Fort Myers, Fla., reported a 28
percent drop in juvenile arrests after the city began a program called
Success Through Academics and Recreation Support and built a recreation
center in a lowincome community; children enrolled in the program also
showed a significant turnaround in school performance. One year after Hart
County, Ga., began a recreation and mentoring program for firsttime juvenile
offenders, juvenile incarcerations fell by 25 percent and reports of juvenile
crime fell by 14 percent. Newark, N.J., renovated its JFK recreation center
and program, attracting some 5,000 youngsters a month to ice skate and play
basketball, and crime in the area decreased. New York City chose a truancy
program over a curfew, and juvenile crime dropped by 30 percent between 1993
and 1996.

Here in the District, with the start of schools delayed, and last month's
report by the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives telling us
that onehalf of the District's young African American men are under some
form of judicial supervision, District officials must face the facts about
juvenile crime. After all, adult offenders are likely to have been juvenile
offenders. The real way to prevent juvenile crime is to occupy and enrich
children by providing them with education, employment opportunities and
recreational activities, and to stop the twin scourges of guns and drugs
scourges brought upon us by adults, not children.

The curfew law does nothing to address District children's educational needs
or to help District children develop occupational skills or learn discipline
and selfesteem through work experience; it does nothing to keep guns and
drugs out of the hands and mouths of District children; and it does nothing
to occupy children during the time when most juvenile crime occurs.

Instead of restricting children's nighttime access to public streets, parks,
basketball courts and movie theaters, District officials and community
leaders should encourage young people to visit those places and engage in
activities that occupy them and give them reasons not to commit crimes by day
or night. Curfew laws and similar measures, such as trying everyounger
children as adults, are easy to pass and cheap to implement. They may also
impress voters and comfort residents and tourists but the comfort is a
false one. The only way to stop juvenile crime is to attack its real causes.
Being young and out late at night is not among them.

Sadiq Reza, a Washington lawyer with Arnold & Porter, was a staff attorney at
the D.C. Public Defender Service from October 1993 until last month.

_ Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company