Axis
Youth Violence Prevention
Problems addressed
Juvenile delinquency

Effectiveness

No Effect

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No Effect

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Description

In approximately 75% of US cities, mandatory curfew laws are in place to restrict the presence of youth (17 years of age or younger) in certain public spaces for specified periods of time. These laws give the police the power to halt and question youths, and to tell them to return home or deal with fines or penalties, where appropriate.
The purpose of curfew laws is to reduce crime, violence, and juvenile delinquency by keeping young people at home at night so that they are less exposed to opportunities to commit law violations or become victims of crime. More recently, mandatory curfew laws have been enacted to coincide with school hours in order to reduce absenteeism.

Country of application
  • United States
Evidence

The Crime Solutions platform rates curfews as ineffective to reduce the incidence of juvenile crime. In arriving at this rating, Crime Solutions relied on a systematic review conducted by the Campbell Collaboration, according to which the average effect on juvenile crime during curfews was slightly positive (i.e., there was a slight increase in crime) and close to zero when a longer period of time was considered. According to the same study, juvenile victimization does not appear to have been affected by the imposition of curfews either [1].
The Crime Reduction Toolkit platform presents a second systematic review and, based on it, points out that there is no evidence that this type of intervention has had, in general, any statistically significant impact on crime [2].

Bibliography

[1] Wilson, D. B., Gill, C., Olaghere, A., McClure, D. (2016). Juvenile Curfew Effects on Criminal Behavior and Victimization: A Systematic Review. Campbell Systematic Reviews, 12(1), 1–97. https://doi.org/10.4073/csr.2016.3

[2] Adams, K. (2003). The Effectiveness of Juvenile Curfews at Crime Prevention. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 587(1), 136–159. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716202250944

Information Source

Evaluated cases

Why might the cases evaluated have different levels of effectiveness in relation to their respective type of solution?
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Some cases were not included in the evidence bank due to deficiencies detected in the methodology of their impact evaluations.
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