How I See the World.

 Today, more than ever, our nation needs to keep our young people active in school and church activities in order to provide them with a positive path to follow in life. Too many of our young people are dropping out of school and setting themselves up for failure in other aspects of their life.

• Juvenile violence peaks in the afterschool hours on school days and in the evenings on nonschool days.
• On nonschool days, the incidence of juvenile violence increases through the afternoon and early evening hours, peaking between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.
• About half of the days in a year are school days. The other days fall in summer months, on weekends, and on holidays. Despite this, 61% of all violent crimes by juveniles occur on school days. In fact, 20% of juvenile violent crime occurs in the 4 hours between 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. on school days, while 14% occurs during the standard juvenile curfew hours of 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.
• The annual number of hours in the curfew period (i.e., 8 hours every day in the year) is 4 times greater than the number of hours in the 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. period on school days (i.e., 4 hours in half of the days in the year). Therefore, the rate of juvenile violence in the afterschool period is almost 6 times the rate in the juvenile curfew period.
• Consequently, efforts to reduce juvenile crime after school would appear to have greater potential to decrease a community’s violent crime rate than do juvenile curfews.