Youth Curfews in the United States: The Creation of Public Spheres for Some Young People

This work explores the extent to which juvenile curfews in the United States rely on the dominant Western concept of the child, which defines children as innocent, passive, and dependent. While juvenile curfew ordinances themselves, as well as the judicial interpretations of those ordinances, rely heavily on and invoke this understanding of what it means to be a child, several more recent juvenile curfew laws suggest more is in operation. Three more recently enacted juvenile curfew laws contain a number of exceptions to a general curfew that effectively regulate young people's access to public spaces, channelling them into activities that are supervised by adults. This channelling has two effects: it operates to exclude young people from unregulated public space, and it creates public spheres for those considered children. Unlike the free public sphere envisioned by Habermas, these are places only fully open to white, classprivileged, young people. Therefore, these juvenile curfews and the public spheres for children they create help reaffirm the race, gender and class hierarchy of the United States.