There should be curfew laws for juveniles

1."In order for a study to be accurate, they need to compare data between cities with and without curfews." I contend that the way the study did it would give more accurate results, for comparing data between cities would bring in other factors because of different municipal policies and regulations. By con's logic Japan is considered one of the safest countries and by international comparison their crime rate is low. Japan probably the only country (that I know of) that impose curfew law on all children in some form or another so that must have an effect on crime rate. I think it's more important to look at the "before and after." Juvenile crimes dramatically decreases after enforcing youth curfews: http://articles.latimes.com... 2. "That was a very extreme situation. Most juvenile curfews are not imposed in these kind of situations." The debate topic didn't say under which situation. Under "extreme" situations, they are clearly needed and needed the most so I used that example because con was trying to generalize saying all studies don't support curfew laws. In places where there are high crime rates, there should be curfew laws for juveniles. If there shouldn't be, then there would be more deaths. Whether it will help short-term or long-term for these situations, it's helping. In order to say there shouldn't be curfew laws, we need to increase moral education amongst the citizens, but the reality is that we often can't do it in time. 3. "Removing juveniles from the streets makes the streets vacant. More opportunities for adults to commit crime. " Having children around adults who are set on committing crime will not make the adult less scared. What con cited did not show that adults would be less likely to commit crime if kids are around. In fact, if children were to find out that an adult was committing a crime, the children would be more likely to get hurt than an adult when the adult tries to escape. 4. "Why not impose a curfew for that age group? The answer is that elderly people can vote, youth can't. " That's going to bring another debate on whether elderly people with dementia should be allowed to vote but I will not go there. The problem is that everyone ages at different times. There are are really old people who are still perfectly functioning normally, and then there are people who are only in there 50s with mental problems. If there's a systematic way of figuring out which elderly people can still function normally and who can't, those who can't should probably not go out at night as well. This is different with juveniles, especially younger children. We can pretty much agree that juveniles, with the really rare exception of few, can't function like adults. 5. "Just because a juvenile is at home, doesn't mean they are sleeping. They could be on their computers or just staying awake. Also, how much sleep a teen gets is no ones business except the teen and his/her family." Con keeps on mentioning what teenager does is no one's business, but that is a bad mentality. If "what they do is none of your business unless what they are doing affects you or they are committing a crime," then there wouldn't be a legal drinking age, legal driving age for the underaged. Can't the family just set them themselves? I imagine it will turn into those situations where a kid might probably drink behind their parents back because his friends' parents allowed to drink already. It's not just the family's responsibility to shape the citizens of tomorrow, but it should be everyone else's job too. Staying on computers is better than being in an arcade with friends. It's harder to quit and go home to sleep even when they are tired, due to peer pressure and the fact that their parents aren't with them. It's better to be at home where they can talk with their parents, than out in the street at night where adults could approach them and sell drugs, for example. 6. I said it does take up police effort, but it is not a waste. It is productive, and that it shouldn't require police effort if the parents watch their kids. I am not sure how long it took to catch 450 16-17 year olds in con's research, but I would imagine it'd be difficult for especially kids younger than 16 to sneak outside if their parents don't allow them to and take the time to explain to them why not. Curfew works: http://articles.latimes.com... http://www.usmayors.org... Additionally, the study showed that the number of police officers did not have an impact on curfew enactment (page 17 & 18). http://elsa.berkeley.edu...