Evaluation of the Youth Curfew in Prince George's County, Maryland, Final Report

• NCJ Number: 200519
• Author(s): Caterina Gouvis M.S.
• Date Published: July 2000
• Length: 34 pages
• Publication Series: NIJ Research Report
• Grant Number(s): 99-IJ-CX-0008
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Program/Project Evaluation

Annotation

Prince George’s County, Maryland's youth curfew law is evaluated in this report from the Urban Institute.

Abstract

Policymakers sometimes actively sponsor restrictive and punitive measures limiting the rights of youth in response to juvenile crime. This report presents background information concerning Prince George’s County, Maryland's youth curfew law. Designed as a way to reduce youth victimization, youth curfew laws aim to protect youths, reduce crime, protect society, and reinforce parental authority by keeping unsupervised youths off the streets during times when the risk of crime is the greatest. Following a brief literature review highlighting youth curfew laws’ effects on reducing violent crimes, the authors detail Prince George’s County's curfew law which requires individuals younger than 17 to be off the streets and out of public areas from 10 P.M. to 5 A.M. on weeknights and from midnight to 5 A.M. on weekends. In order to assess the effectiveness of the youth curfew law, the authors analyzed incident reports for violent victimizations from the Prince George’s County Police Department. Autoregressive integrated moving average techniques and spatial analysis indicated little support for the hypothesis that the curfew reduced violent victimization of youth within curfew age, although victimization was reduced in older youths and young adults aged 22 to 25. A series of figures detailing Prince George’s County Police Districts and Beats and event clusters are also included. References