There’s an interesting moral argument against curfews that target otherwise law- abiding adolescents.
The Debatepedia website sums up this argument thusly: “Children have a right to freedom of movement and assembly, which curfews directly undermine, by criminalizing their simple presence in a public space. This reverses the presumption of innocence by assuming all young people are potential law-breakers. They are also subject to blanket discrimination on the grounds of age, despite the fact that only a few young people ever commit a criminal offence and that adults too commit crime.”
Everyone will have their own thoughts on whether curfews are discriminatory, including the one Flin Flon city council will potentially enact on July 4.
What matters most is whether a curfew would make Flin Flon a safer place. In that regard, the evidence is not favourable.
This is acknowledged even by the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, a right-leaning think tank one would expect to endorse curfews as a tool in society’s crime-fighting arsenal.
As the centre’s Roger Currie writes, “most evidence suggests that [curfews] have not been effective in preventing crime.
“Sometimes crime does drop during curfew hours, but at the same time, crime will perhaps increase outside the boundaries of the curfew, or during non-curfew hours.
“Another problem is that youth who already have a criminal history are unlikely to obey the curfew. Meanwhile, teenagers who are not causing trouble are penalized even though they’ve done nothing wrong.”
Currie’s conclusion: “Municipalities would do better to promote a positive relationship between youth and the police, rather than poisoning the relationship through disrespect.”
Currie was talking about crime prevention, but the rationale for a curfew given by Flin Flon city council is not actual crime – it’s the presumption that crime could occur if groups of under-16 youth are allowed to walk the streets late at night.
“There’s a perception out there that there’s some hazard in walking around Flin Flon at certain periods in the evening,” Mayor Cal Huntley said. “Now it’s a perception. It’s not necessarily the way that it is, but it’s a perception. If enough people believe it, then you do something to try and [alleviate] that. There’s no reason for large groups of kids, younger kids, to be out wandering around at that time of night, and this just gives the RCMP the ability to disperse appropriately and send them home.”
Enacting laws based on perceptions – ones the mayor himself acknowledges may be fallacious – seems like overreach on the part of council.
Even if council did try to base its proposed curfew on actual crime, the stats wouldn’t back them up. The number of young offenders charged by Flin Flon RCMP dropped 40 per cent in 2016, and as of March was on par with those same levels in 2017.
Granted, this is based only on crimes where charges were laid. It could be that those who assume children and young teens are behind unsolved break-ins and instances of vandalism are correct, but we have no way of knowing.
If youth are behind a crime wave that is undetectable by statistics, will yet another law deter those same kids?
That said, the pressure facing council to act on this issue is understandable. Their proposed curfew is likely to garner strong public support and may well become the law of the land as of July 4.
If that makes some residents feel safer, then it’s a good thing. The question is, will anyone really be safer?
