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     Thomas Jefferson, one of the founders of this country, said that "Those who would sacrifice a little freedom for a little security will lose both and deserve neither." We are not a socialist state, the desires of the many do not out weigh the rights of the few. The rights of all groups and all individuals no matter how small, poor, weak, or unpopular, are sacred. Those rights are sacred regardless of what the majority believes will increase public safety. That is one of the founding principles that this country is based on. The individual's rights are sacred, they are beyond question, and they are most certainly beyond arbitrary time restrictions, set by intolerant politicians.

     The evidence that curfews have any effect on crime is non-existant, the claim that they reduce victimization does not stand up to the simplest logical test, and that is that most victimization of young people occurs in the home, not on the streets or in places of business. The Report in the January 1999, edition of the Western Criminology Review, states plainly and simply that curfews have no effect on juvenile crime. Why then are these laws still routinely being passed around the country? Why have several cities that have had their laws challenged successfully, immediately rewritten the law and passed it again?

     They are not effecting crime, they are not protecting young people from victimization, the answer has eluded me for some time. My theory at the moment is that curfews, like so many laws in the United States today, are weapons of cultural aggression against youth. They go right along with skateboarding laws, hacky sack laws, hair spray laws, and of course the insane levels of stupidity acheived by zero-tolerance policies in public schools, the ultimate tool of cultural aggression since they were conceived, by dictators hundreds of years ago.

     A public official today who will stand in front citizens and lie to them about curfews, is the 90's version of a public official who stands at the gates of a concentration camp and declares 'work makes you free'. As surely as work never made you free during the holocaust, curfews will never prevent crime. As surely as officials lied then, they are lying now. They are lying in a disgusting manner, where one was lying to controll and murder, this one lies to control and to profit from his lies as well as from the suffering of the unpopular group he has targeted.

     Officials will declare that everything is for the children if it will give an extra vote or an extra dollar in their pocket. This is convenient because it lets them use the problems of those who are not allowed to vote, which means they don't actually have to consider whether the policy will really improve the lives of that group, or whether it will offend the targeted group. Young people don't vote, and they really don't have that much money to bribe (ehem...I mean contribute to ) politicians, even more society has them in a stranglehold of cultural and legal binds that leaves them at the mercy of their so-called guardians and leaves them open to the slander and political attack on young people common in the 90's without any real ability to defend themselves.

     At the same time, the juvenile justice system is an oxymoron, it consists of the same and often harsher penalties for the same crimes as in adult courts, with very few procedural protections which are required of adult courts. Conditions in juvenile lock-ups are, in practice, no better and sometimes worse than conditions in adult jails. Treatment, education, and rehabilitation programs are comparably lacking, just as in the adult system. Overcrowding is another problem, which is making prison construction one of the fastest growing industries in America today.

     America is going down the toilet, its lies, its panacea solutions to complex problems, and its closely held myths about its own young people, which for some unknown reason it despises like nothing else are pulling it there. Combine that with the virtual looting of the country in the form of indebting the nation to support its senior welfare programs and you have the end of America as we know it within 50 years. Now this is not directly related to curfews, but curfews are one more piece in the array of problems this country will face and continue to face if serious, honest, and positive solutions to our current problems are not embraced and adopted by todays leaders, because dumping those problems on the next generation is neither a solution nor an option for a prosperous America that wishes to continue to prosper.