Living After Midnight…. Or Not

Living After Midnight.... Or Not

Deciding on a curfew should not be up to the state, it should be a compromised decision between parent and child. Some states have laws enforcing a time when teens need to be home, after that time the police get involved. That is not fair to teens and could end up causing more problems.

 In Conyers, Georgia they have a curfew for teens of 9:30 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. Police in Conyers have written at least 19 tickets to teens being out past curfew since 2013 (Visser 1).

Giving tickets out to kids for being out past a certain time is not fair. When teens are out late it should up to the parents to punish their child. In some situations police are taking teens to the police station if they’re out past curfew, which is just ridiculous.

In “Should Kids Have a Curfew”  it states that , “curfews violate our constitutional rights. All U.S. citizens have a right to gather peacefully and to be protected against unreasonable search and seizure.” In some states/cities like Conyers if teens are out past curfew a police officer can search them, even though they’re just out later they can search through all of their belongings, which is not fair or right.

An eighth-grader from Chagrin Falls, Ohio stated, “a curfew should be decided by parents, not by the government” he also added, “a parents knows the independence level of a teenager and can decide a curfew that would apply to him or her” (“Should Kids Have a Curfew” 2).

Instead of making curfews a law, cities/states should invest in after school activities teens could take part in like skate parks, bowling alleys, shopping centers etc. Having such strict laws could cause teens to want to rebel against the curfew and could cause a lot more problems.

It’s a parents right to determine what is right or wrong and best for their child. Parents know their kids better than anyone and it should be up to the parents to make decisions like when their kid needs to be home.

Let’s leave the parenting to the parents and not to the state/cities!

Sources I used in this article:

Curfew Crackdown Targets More Parents by Steve Visser

Should Kids Have a Curfew?  Junior Scholastic