New Haven Independent

Posted by: scott | August 28, 2006 3:12 PM

New Haven should strongly consider a curfew for children less than 16 years of age and perhaps for those less than 18 years of age as well.
Juvenile crime has been a continuing problem for the city. While the majority of children are not out looking for trouble, trouble often finds them. The recent deaths of three people in New Haven have spotlighted these troubles, and city leaders are considering options to curb teen violence, including a curfew and a gun buyback program.
While gun buyback programs have enormous political and media appeal, they have not been shown to reduce violence, whereas properly enacted curfew ordinances that include a comprehensive, community based program designed to protect both the community and the juvenile from victimization and serve as \ constructive intervention against developing patterns of delinquency have been shown to work. Many large municipalities, notably Dallas, Chicago, New Orleans, Phoenix and others have such programs have successfully reduced juvenile crime and victimization utilizing a multifaceted approach to teen violence. In these programs, strict curfews are coupled with the creation of dedicated curfew centers, use of recreation centers and churches to receive juveniles picked up by the police, staffing of curfew centers with social service professionals and community volunteers, referrals to social service providers and counseling classes for the juveniles and their families when warranted, procedures for repeat offenders including fines, counseling or sentences to community service and recreation and jobs programs. These programs have also been designed to pass Constitutionality issues, and are flexible enough to allow teens with jobs or other valid reasons to travel to and from their destinations.
Gun buyback programs, on the other hand, have not demonstrated any reduction in crime. The HUD buyback program initiated in 1999 by the Clinton administration at a cost of $15 million was terminated in 2001, primarily due to a lack of local housing authorities interest in applying for funding, results gun buybacks had been minimal, program failure to reduce ownership of guns by criminals, and guns being sold back were not the types of weapons typically used in crimes (many were old or inoperative). A Harvard University study of buyback programs in Boston in 1993 and 1994 found that nearly three-quarters of the guns recovered were made before 1968. In Seattle, one-quarter of the guns collected were inoperable. Independent follow-up studies of gun buy-backs in Seattle, Sacramento, St. Louis and Boston found no evidence that the programs reduced gun crime. In Seattle, researchers also checked coroner's records and hospital admissions data for the six months following a buy-back in 1992. They found no evidence of an effect on firearms-related deaths or injuries. At a U.S. National Institute of Justice lecture University of Pennsylvania professor Lawrence Sherman, who headed a wide-ranging assessment of crime prevention programs, called gun buy-backs "the program that is best known to be ineffective" in reducing firearms violence.
Given these facts, why would the city endorse a buyback program (as reported Hill Alderman Jorge Perez at a meeting of the Aldermanic Black and Hispanic Caucus)? It appears that the money would be better spent on a combination of curfew enactment and outreach programs for our youth, to protect them from and prevent their participation in crime.
Naturally, if the parents of these youths roaming the streets at night took responsibility for their children, this may not be an issue. In the absence of this, city leaders must look to a comprehensive approach to this issue that will truly address the problem, and avoid feel-good policies that do not work.