Curfew Law Enforcement - Case Study Example

They are mostly enforced to help reduce the youth participation in activities that may be considered criminal and affect their lives, or endanger their and other people’s lives. The restrictions also enable parents to have better and clear supervision of their children’s activities on the afterhours. It has been proved through studies that cities with enforced curfew laws have had significant drops in youth participation in criminal activities. A 2011 study analyzed data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Unified Criminal Reporting files from 1980 to 2004 for the 54 larger U.S. cities (180,000-plus residents) and enacted youth curfews between 1985 and 2002, focusing on arrests for both minor offenses (loitering and curfew violations) and more serious infractions (such as violent crimes and property crimes).

The report showed that arrests of youths directly impacted by curfew restrictions dropped by almost 15% in the first year and approximately 10% in following years (Weigel, 2011). This paper will therefore weigh the facts of the plaintiff against the constitutional mandate and responsibility of the defendant of enforcing state laws and give a verdict. DISCUSSIONS Freedom of assembly is a fundamental part and a right that is provided and protected in the first amendment and should therefore be enjoyed by every citizen.

If not properly enforced, curfew laws can greatly infringe on human rights and freedom of assembly and even freedom of expression. SUSIE MARKS CASE AGAINST RUTHLESS Susie after boarding Jerry and Kate’s truck against her will was seriously injured when the truck in which she was riding failed to negotiate a left turn. Notwithstanding that the state allowed persons to board the back of trucks without seat belts, Susie felt that given a choice she would have walked home or waited for Orson. Ruthless neither accorded her the freedom to express her wish and plan nor considered the implications of his actions having in mind that Jerry was a minor who had just been licensed to drive and therefore had insufficient experience.

Ruthless told Jerry: "Get everybody out of here," and that "if you guys don't get out of here, curfew will be enforced." These words were also scaring especially for minors who feared that their actions if any against Ruthless would have “curfew enforced”. An example would be Hodgkins v. Peterson, SD Indiana 2004 when the judge ruled in favour of the defendants (Hodgkins) (Sandy, 2008). The arguments can be compared to Susie’s case given the fact that the law enforcer scared the minors through inappropriate words.

In the Hodgkins case the argument was that For a person to file a claim that violates their First Amendments rights, they must prove that their speech was actually chilled. Just like in Hodgkins case, they deemed the ordnance unconstitutional because fear of criminal prosecution would have prevented, or did prevent them from going to late night protests, political rallies, or church events, which are protected First Amendment rights. (Sandy, 2008). RUTHLESS’ FACTS AND ARGUMENT Ruthless being a law enforcer was within his constitutional mandate of performing his duties and was right to order the kids to leave for home.

As studies have shown young people under 16 were responsible for 62 percent of violent juvenile offenses, statistics also showed that teenagers were the most frequent targets of juvenile violence (Constitutional Rights Foundation, 2013).He also argued that Jerry had no problem dropping off Susie although he did not hear her out. Ruthless therefore having given the youngsters an