For West Chicago High School junior Terry Nelson, curfew is something that can change on a daily basis. Nowhere in his home is it written in granite that he has to be in at 11 p.m., or midnight, or later.
“My mom prefers me to be home around midnight,” he said, “but it depends on if I’m staying at a friend’s house or going to a movie. If I’m going to be late, it’s okay as long as I clear it first. My friends have it pretty much the same. It’s pretty flexible at their houses, too.”
Flexibility is the key word when it comes to curfews for teens in the suburbs, and that flexibility applies to police as well as parents.
Not only do curfew times vary from municipality to municipality, but the degree to which the curfews are enforced and the subsequent punishments also can differ. Law enforcement officials admit they exercise a great deal of flexibility in deciding whom to charge and whom to let go.
Illinois has a state curfew of 11 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and midnight Friday and Saturday for children under age 17 who are not accompanied by an adult. The majority of municipalities in the suburbs mirror the state guidelines. A minority have enacted their own earlier municipal curfews. And it’s up to each municipality to decide how to punish offenders.
The City of Chicago is one of the places with an earlier curfew, 10:30 p.m. on weeknights and 11:30 p.m. on weekends for children under age 17. Aurora is another. Aurora’s City Council passed one of the stiffest curfews in the Chicago area in the fall of 1992, aimed at getting the attention of the parents of teenage violators, said Aurora Mayor David Pierce when it was passed.
Under Aurora’s double-tiered curfew system, children under 16 must be home by 10 p.m. every night, and those between 16 and 18 must be home by 11 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and midnight Friday and Saturday. Teenagers going directly home from work, school or a non-profit sponsored function are exempt.
In addition, those caught violating curfew while driving will have the vehicle seized and have to post a $250 bond to retrieve it.
Aurora police juvenile division patrolman Terry Wegman said about five violators are brought in every week, about half of whom are in cars and half on foot.
“I think (the new curfew and fine) have really cut down on driving (by curfew violators),” Wegman said. “That $250 really hits them.”
If the teens say they had a legitimate reason to be out, he said, “We confirm it. If they say they just got off work at Burger King, we go over there and check it out. And if it’s a prom or something, we know about it,” and they don’t pick up kids.
In Wheaton, the municipal ordinance mirrors the state law of 11 and midnight, and violators are issued a ticket and must appear in court. Cmdr. Terry Leonard estimated that 100 to 150 teens are arrested for curfew violations each year. Fines fall between $10 and $100, with the higher fines for repeat offenders.
Leonard said police sometimes will drive around “places we know of, based on information from the public,” where teens might hang out. Once repeat offenders get to court and receive big fines from a judge, the problem is less likely to happen again. “That generally wakes them up,” Leonard said.
Hinsdale also mirrors the state law, and juvenile officer Mark Mandarino said a couple of violators end up in court with their parents each month paying fines. Some parents are cooperative, and others treat it like a joke, he said. Mandarino believes the curfew is good preventive medicine.
“It’s so they don’t get involved in any trouble,” he said. “When they’re out that late, hopefully we can prevent (anything bad happening).”
Police say they encounter myriad responses from parents when they bring curfew violators home or ask parents to come to the station to pick them up. Some are grateful to the officers for getting their children safely off the streets. Others believe the child’s curfew and whereabouts should be a family matter, not a government concern.
Carol Dean, whose twin sons are 16-year-old sophomores at Naperville North High School, is in the former category. “One of the advantages of a community-enforced curfew,” she said, “is that it gives backbone for parents to be able to say if you’re under 17, you must be in by 11. I find it very helpful.”
Dean’s sons generally don’t go out on weeknights. On weekends, she likes them home at 11:30 p.m., but that can be extended if there’s a dance or special event they want to attend. “I’d say their friends have similar curfews,” she said. “This is about the norm.”
Curfew laws have been around for decades, both to keep youngsters safe from crime and to keep them from committing crimes.
But curfew laws are not vigorously enforced, and there is no hard data showing curfews to have a significant impact on crime, said John Hood, research director of the John Locke Foundation, a public policy think tank in Raleigh, N.C.
If police picked up all curfew violators in all parts of a city, they’d be spreading themselves too thin, Hood said. On the other hand, if they target particular neighborhoods, “they open themselves up to charges of selective enforcement and discrimination. Most police departments don’t have the resources to consistently enforce it.”
Curfews also cause problems for the American Civil Liberties Union, which has assisted in challenging curfew laws in several cities across the country.
The ACLU has historically been against curfews, said Valerie Phillips, public information director in the Chicago office, because “the laws criminalize otherwise lawful behavior; they restrict and violate the laws of association . . . and we also think these ordinances interfere with the parent-child relationship. Parents should be able to set hours and activities for their child and deal with breaches of parental-imposed curfews.”
Elgin police Sgt. Joseph Kline said his municipality, though, sees the need for more than parental curfews. Elgin recently investigated how other municipalities dealt with curfew offenders so it could write a new ordinance. Until now, Elgin curfew violators were just taken home or picked up by parents at the police station; no fines or citations were issued.
That’s going to change. Elgin is working on implementing a citation, fine and municipal court appearance system for teens caught out too late.
“We recognized the need, especially with some juveniles involved with gangs,” Kline said. “We really haven’t had much of a serious problem with it. We’re dealing with the same percentage over and over, and this is an effort to control those very small numbers.”
Kline admits that Elgin officers don’t always have time to bring in curfew violators, and therefore the 11 p.m. weekday and midnight weekend curfews are enforced sporadically. If the patrol officers are busy handling complaints, he said, “We don’t expect them to be picking up juveniles. But as time becomes available, we expect them to swing by places where kids hang out.”
Although several teens said they aren’t afraid of being picked up by police after curfew, all knew of at least one other teen who had been picked up or at least stopped by police for violating curfew. The offenders all had been driven home or just told to walk home immediately after police determined they weren’t committing any other crime.
Carol Dean said she knew of a friend’s child who had been brought to the police station in Naperville for breaking curfew.
“It makes an impression on the kid,” she said. “It makes a point when they’re taken to the police station.”
Nelson of West Chicago said he was walking home from a friend’s house last year at about 12:30 a.m. when he was stopped by police. He told them he was walking home, and they gave him a ride the rest of the way without ticketing him.
“I wasn’t really worried,” said Nelson, who believes curfew should be up to parents, not police. “Not everybody goes out and causes trouble,” he said. “If you’re not causing any problems, it should be up to your parents.”
