Curfew Arguments

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Curfew has always been considered an answer to juvenile delinquency and victimization. The topic of curfews for minors has been around since the 1950’s. Shay Bilchik, the administrator of the Juvenile Justice Department wrote, in 1996, about the rise in crime and as a result cities have been passing curfew ordinance. He mentions throughout the article, the legal challenges, the representatives curfew programs, and then speaks about the few cities where curfews have been beneficial for the community. The ethical argument of the article is stating that curfews in communities continue to assist in the decreasing crime locally. Shay Bilchiks argument on the effectiveness of curfews with minors is persuading, however the article is not only outdated, …show more content…
The article reaches out towards parents and pro-curfew supporters. Throughout the article, Bilchick only mentions seven cities, Dallas, Texas, Phoenix,Arizona, Chicago, Illinois, New Orleans, Louisiana, Denver, Colorado, and Jacksonville, Florida. All seven cities show how the law put in place has reduced crime at night. The author of the argument is founder and Director of the Center for Juvenile Justice Reform at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy. The bias is clearly evident during the paper, Bilchick fails to mention any of the failure rates or speak about any possible arguments against it. The main overarching point or reason for the article is to show how the laws put in place in certain cities have shown successful results in diminishing the delinquency of minors. Bilchick mentions that communities that develop and implement curfews in conjunction with programs and services designed to help the youth and families to solve underlying individual or family problems have an opportunity to enhance positive youth development, prevent delinquency, and reduce the victimization of children. The type of argument being presented to the audience is an evaluation of the …show more content…
The few studies he acknowledges is, for example, the studies of curfew ordinances around the first half of the 1990’s, in the 200 largest cities in the United States, were surveyed 73 percent had a curfew put in place by 1995. Then he alludes to a few court cases, in 1975, the very first federal case that concerned juvenile curfews was Bykofsky v. Borough of Middletown. The curfew was challenged when the court believed it went against the juveniles 1st and 4th rights, and took away parental guidance and their right to raise their children the way they saw as acceptable. The next case that was referred to was Waters v. Barry, where the court decided that curfew was against the 1st and the 5th amendment, but not the

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