Curfew for Minors: Effective Safety Measure or Infringement of Rights?
Curfews have many great outcomes, and I believe they keep us and others safe. Many parents also share this belief that when they give their children a curfew they are protecting them from a certain danger. I have to agree with those parents. I believe that curfews work because teens avoid consequences from parents, become law abiding citizens, and prevent unnecessary trouble. The reason why I decided to write an argumentative essay about curfew is because I support this idea and I want to tell people why.
Growing up in my home my siblings had a curfew of ten o’clock at night. We all knew that if we were not in the house by the set curfew we would have an extremely irate mother waiting for answers by the morning. We knew we would have consequences if we did not make curfew, especially if we did not call or text telling her we would be late. The consequences were never fun to deal with. Determined to avoid consequences we would make it to the house on time which would ultimately keep us out of trouble and save us from the dreaded lectures.
I remember a point the curfew for my entire neighborhood was at eleven o’clock. The police would come through the neighborhood and patrol for suspicious activity. It got to the point where if we did break curfew we’d have to answer to our mother and the police. My siblings and I would’ve rather obeyed the law. I feel as though my mother’s goal was to keep us out of the police’s way and to teach us to become law abiding citizens.
Of course, teenagers want and need a social life and the freedom to go out and figure themselves out. “Children are assumed to be acting anti-socially just because they're under 16 and therefore there's no real presumption of innocence. The police have ample powers to deal with anti-social behaviour'. Some scientists describe teens to be bad news because of their age, but in reality if given the freedom to not have a curfew they would not be sneaking out and lying to their parents. Curfews are useless unless needed for special circumstances such as juvenile delinquents or grounded teens. Presumably teenagers who do not have curfews get in less trouble than those that do.
In conclusion to this argumentative essay about curfew for minors, it is a well known fact that when teenagers get bored they find anything to occupy our minds. Another goal of curfews is to prevent this from happening. An idle mind is a workshop for mischief. Late at night when everything is closed, teens will naturally venture into bad or even criminal behavior because there is nothing else to do. Bored teens usually equal unnecessary crimes and unsolicited danger. I believe that a curfew can do away with this problem because teens are in the house under their parent’s supervision.
