INDEPTH: CURFEWS
Curfews: Do you know where your children are?
CBC News Online | August 19, 2004
Using curfews – "couvre-feux" in French and "coprifuoco" in Italian – to restrict assembly outside the home, dates back to the ninth century, when England's Alfred the Great demanded people douse their fires, and go home before the evening.
Two hundred years later, William the Conqueror imposed the curfew to keep the Saxon population from engaging in disorderly behaviour after the twilight hours. And during the U.S. Civil War, curfews restricted the movement of slaves and free blacks in some southern states, a practice that continued until the 1960s.
While curfews fell out of fashion during the liberal 1960s and 70s in the U.S. and Canada, in the late 80s some municipalities reintroduced the measure and aimed it specifically at teenagers. In the U.S., juvenile curfew ordinances became widespread in the mid-90s and won the support of former U.S. president Bill Clinton, who came forward in 1996 to support a new teen curfew policy.
In Canada, more than 15 communities in New Brunswick introduced curfew bylaws in 2001 as a measure to combat teenage vandalism and, on Aug. 3, 2004, the town of Huntingdon, Que., followed suit. But in general, curfews are not a major political issue in Canada, say the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and the Association of Municipalities of Ontario. While most municipalities may have such bylaws, they don't seem to be enforced.
In Toronto, Canada's largest city, curfew bylaws don't exist and never did, says Gil Golka, the city's bylaw co-ordinator.
"Even if we did have such a bylaw, how would we enforce it?" asks Golka. "Our police would have to stop people they suspect to be underage and ask for identification, which could also be fake. I think such a bylaw would be unfeasible and I don't think police would want to go that route."
Britain went that route in 1997, when some cities introduced a Child Safety Initiative, which prohibited people under the age of 16 from being out on the streets after 8 p.m. Parents welcomed this curfew and studies showed that juvenile crime dropped.
In 2004, similar curfews were put in place for parts of London, England, and many small towns where gang violence and drug activity is on the rise. In the capital, the law maintains that police can fine unaccompanied youth found loitering around Oxford Street, Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square past 9 p.m.
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