Humble Renews Citywide Curfew for Anyone Under 17 Years Old

HUMBLE, TX — Hey kids, stay off the streets. The Humble City Council has renewed a curfew for anyone under the age of 18 years old.

Under the city's ordinance it is illegal for anyone 17 years old or younger to be outside between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. Sunday through Thursday or between the hours of 12:01 a.m. and 6 a.m. on Saturday or Sunday.

Which means no closing shifts during the week and no pre-dawn runs or before school fishing trips to the lake.

The wording of the curfew does allow children to be camping out in their own backyard and for people to be sitting on their front porch, but it does make it illegal for anyone to allow a minor to remain in an establishment during curfew hours.

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Curfew violators are subject to a penalty of no more than $500 for each day of the violation. There are exceptions that allow minors to be out during curfew hours — if they are part of a student organization, working on a school project or going to and from work.

Although the general idea behind a youth curfew is to curtail disorderly conduct and crack down on juvenile delinquets, the effectiveness of the broad tool is very debatable.

A 2011 UC-Berkeley study reviewed juvenile curfews in 54 of the largest U.S. cities and found that, between 1985 and 2002, the arrest of youths affected by curfew restrictions dropped about 15 percent in the first year after the curfew was enacted and stayed down about 10 percent every year after that.

And while a 10-15 percent drop in the arrest of youthful offenders sounds like a good thing, it's not guaranteed. An earlier, and more widely cited, study by Mike Males and Dan McAllister found no statistical link between juvenile curfew laws and a reduction in crime.

Passing a curfew doesn't just raise question about the effectiveness of policing strategies, it also opens up law enforcement to questions about policing tactics and harassment.

One of main questions that gets routinely raised about municipal curfew laws is whether they provide cover for police departments to racially profile underage minorities. A 2013 review of New Orleans' curfew arrests found that, from 2009 to 2012, 93 percent of the children stopped for curfew violations were black.

Males and McAllister found that in Venutra County, CA black and Latino/Hispanic youth were 7.4 and 8.4 times more likely to get arrested after the passage of juvenile curfew laws than before.

It's not just accusations of racial profiling that hound curfews, there are also questions about whether curfew laws are a cudgel given to police officers by city councils and used to harass homeless youth.

A 2007 paper form the UC-Hastings College of Law's Public Law Research Institute reviewed the landmark case Nunez v. San Diego. The 1997 case found that San Diego's juvenile curfew, at the time one of the strictest in the country, was unconstitutionally vague and unfairly restricted juveniles' right to freedom of movement, speech and assembly.

Without really providing an example, the authors of the paper argued that juvenile curfew laws are "inadequate and can actually be harmful in dealing with homeless youth."

Since the wording in Humble's curfew ordinance doesn't make any exception for homelessness, concerns could easily be raised that it could be used to illegally target and harass one of Humble ISD's more than 500 homeless students.

Here's hoping that Humble City Council members will ask about Humble PD's targeting of minorities for curfew violations at their next meeting.

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