MR. KOJO NNAMDIMany of us can remember those hot summer nights when the neighborhood kids would gather for some pick-up basketball or a game of capture the flag or just plain hanging out. But across the country cities are increasingly cracking down on being out after dark. From Oakland to Indianapolis, cities are setting curfews for youth, saying they're a necessary tool for keeping crime down, keeping kids safe and parents vigilant.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIAnd nowhere are curfews tighter than in Baltimore where last month the mayor signed one of the strictest laws in the country. While some parents have cheered this new law, the rules have raised red flags about how police will identify curfew breakers and how they'll penalize parents.

MR. KOJO NNAMDISo are curfews positive for public safety or punitive for kids? How effective are they? And what kinds of questions should parents raise when communities want to keep kids indoors? Joining us in studio to discuss this is Sonia Kumar. She is a staff attorney with the ACLU of Maryland. Sonia Kumar, thank you for joining us.

MS. SONIA KUMARThank you for having me.

NNAMDIAlso in studio with us is Daniel Okonkwo, executive director of D.C. Lawyers for Youth. And in the interest of full disclosure I must mention he's also a member of WAMU's community council. Daniel Okonkwo, good to see you again.

MR. DANIEL OKONKWOGood to see you. Thank you for having me.

NNAMDIAnd joining us from studios at the Baltimore Sun is Luke Broadwater. He's a reporter with the Baltimore Sun. Luke, thank you for joining us. You too can join the conversation. We're taking your questions at 800-433-8850. You can send email to kojo@wamu.org or you can shoot us a tweet @kojoshow. Should cities with high crime rates have tighter curfews for kids? Do you think curfews help or hinder relations between youth, parents and law enforcement? Give us a call, 800-433-8850 or send email to kojo@wamu.org.

NNAMDILuke Broadwater, are you there? We're still not hearing Luke Broadwater but Baltimore's curfew has been branded one of the strictest in the country. What is your understanding, Daniel Okonkwo of these new rules for young people starting next month?

OKONKWOWell, we mainly work in D.C. so I'm not as familiar with what Baltimore has proposed. But in my reading of it it seems that they are trying to keep younger and younger kids off the streets before the hours of 10:00 am And these types of curfews are measures that typically have not shown to cause any deterrents in youth crime, nor have curfew enforcement ever really led to the prevention of serious criminal behavior, particularly by young people. So I think this curfew seems to be based on a lot of anecdotal evidence and a lot of what people think works.

NNAMDI800-433-8850 is the number to call. Do you think a tighter curfew in Baltimore will help alleviate the crime problem there, 800-433-8850? Sonia, the ACLU has raised some real concerns about Baltimore's curfew law, starting with the worry that police are going to be making a lot of judgment calls. Can you elaborate on that?

KUMARSure. I mean, so just to begin, the curfew begins at 9:00 pm for kids under 14 and 10:00 pm for kids under 17. And I think, you know, the reason that the -- it's not clear what reason our city has chosen to sort of adopt such a heavy-handed sweeping approach. The reasons given for why the curfew was enacted range from keeping very young children off the streets very late at night to sort of generic belief that kids should be inside.

KUMAROur point is that law -- and in one of the themes running through this idea that kids are going to be connected through services -- to services through curfew enforcement. Somehow the idea is that by interacting with police they'll be taken to these centers and then they will be connected to services, because they must need services if they're outside after 9:00 pm We -- our concerns sort of run the gamut from sort of this idea of the presumption that a kid -- just because a kid is outside there's somehow something defective about parenting or some need for services exist.

KUMARBut separate from that, and a huge issue in Baltimore, is what interactions between young people and police actually look like in reality. And our concern is that the sponsors of the bill and the sort of supporters are sort of willfully ignoring that those situations are already fraught and escalate very quickly. And are sort of -- and, you know, one of the things that's been said is that this is not a detention. This is not a criminal -- the intent is not to criminalize youth.

KUMARBut one of the things Daniel and I were talking about before the show is sort of how difficult -- how unlikely it is that a young person who's stopped is going to voluntarily want to go with a police officer. And how police are going to be sort of forced to use force in order to coerce young people to go with them.

NNAMDIYou broke the guests-not-talking-to-each-other-before-the-show rule by talking to Daniel. But that's fine. Luke Broadwater of the Baltimore Sun is now with us. Luke Broadwater, can we hear you this time? Are you there?

MR. LUKE BROADWATERYes. I could always hear you. I think you couldn't hear though.

NNAMDIThis is true. I'm glad we can now hear each other. Luke, Baltimore has one of the highest crime rates in the country thought homicides are down this year compared to last. But why the push for the tighter curfews now? Are young people accounting for a disproportionate amount of crime or public safety issues?

BROADWATERYou know, I don't think that they are. And that's one of the -- and that's a good question. Why now is this legislation being brought up? We did have earlier this year a string of incidents in which a number of young people were killed. We had three deaths within almost about a week's time. Did that play some role? I don't know.

BROADWATERThis is -- one thing you can say is this is legislation that was in the works for about a year. It was taken -- it was put on the back burner for a long period of time. I'm not sure why. And then it was reintroduced again and then passed the council all of a sudden within a number of weeks. If you believe the bill's sponsors it's because they are generally concerned about kids and they see kids out on the streets at night. And they want them to be safe.

BROADWATERYou know, is there some other ulterior motive here? Is perceptions about crime getting too bad and they want to show that they're doing something? I don't know.

NNAMDILuke, what's been the reaction from parents to this new law?

BROADWATERYou know, that's interesting because, you know, we do hear a lot of complaints from people who think the law is too draconian. That said, we sent reporters out to a number of areas where people might be likely to be stopped for curfew violations. And the parents all there said, we're for the curfew. We don't think kids should be out at night. You know, almost to a man, they said that we found very few people who were upset about a tougher curfew. So parents generally were for it, at least anecdotally from our interviews.

NNAMDI800-433-8850. Luke Broadwater is a reporter for the Baltimore Sun. He joins us from studios there. Sonia Kumar is staff attorney with the ACLU of Maryland. She joins us in our Washington studio along with Daniel Okonkwo, executive director of D.C. lawyers for youth and a member of the WAMU community council. We're taking your calls or questions at 800-433-8850 or you can send email to kojo@wamu.org or send us a tweet @kojoshow.

NNAMDIDaniel, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has said that, quoting here, "When children are on the streets late at night without proper supervision, they are more likely to either become the perpetrators or the victims of violent crime." Has your work in the field borne that out?

OKONKWOAbsolutely not. We know that the prime time for youth arrests are between 3:00 and 8:00 during the school year and between 3:00 and 9:00 in the summer months. So the curfews that want to take kids off the streets earlier around 9:00 really aren't even getting to the -- they're not even dealing with the time when young people are more likely to be arrested.

OKONKWOAlso I think with the notion that curfews protect young people really ignore how youth are victimized. Curfew laws assume that all youth have a safe place to live already and that their homes provide less of an opportunity for them to become victims. We know research -- there's also studies that show 50 percent of young people are also -- are actually victims in their home. So again, the notion that taking young people off the street at night is the only way to protect them.

OKONKWOI think one of the issues too is that it just doesn't -- these laws just don't understand when young people are being arrested. And that's not late at night.

KUMARAnd I just want to add a point...

NNAMDISonia Kumar.

KUMAR...a point about sort of how, I think, curfews often enjoy this sort of broad appeal because intuitively there is a resonance about this idea that kids should be home and safer. But it is -- when we start actually looking at the facts and the evidence, we see that that's not the case. And I think that, you know, the parents that I've spoken with, a lot of them have started out being very supportive of the curfew. But when you start asking, okay, so what about when you want to let your 15-year-old go to the store with her 17-year-old brother supervising? You can't do that under the new law.

KUMARYou know, parents, I think, when they're supporting the curfew are supporting the principle. Of course, everybody wants kids to be safe. We want them to be supported. But the question is, how do we accomplish that? And in enacting this sort of sweeping law, you know, our city government is sort of really ignoring what actually works out there.

KUMARAnd actually the ACLU was part of a, you know, 20-organization-wide coalition that put together an alternate plan for the city council that said, look, this is what the evidence shows. This is what communities have been asking for. Well, they've been asking for rec centers. They've been asking for jobs programs. They've been asking for ways for parents who want help to ask for help. And we aren't investing in those things but we're investing in using police to pick up young people and take them to centers where they're going to be processed.

NNAMDIDaniel, what do we know so far? Indianapolis, Oakland, California and Austin, Texas are considering curfews. Several other U.S. cities have already imposed them, including Miami, Philadelphia and Houston. What have we learned about how effective curfews are from our own city and others with curfews?

OKONKWOSo I would say we aren't learning too much. There really have been no academic studies that have found relationship between curfew enforcement and a reduction in youth crime. D.C. has its own curfew. You know, it's youth who are 17 and under have to be inside between 11:00 pm and 6:00 am and 12:01 and 6:00 am on weekends. And we have seen people try to enact laws that raise -- excuse me, lower the age as well as the time. And those have overwhelmingly failed. I think that we just don't know that curfews have the desired effect. And they sound very good but we just -- there's no studies that show that correlation.

NNAMDII read where the single most likely hour of the school day for a juvenile to commit an assault inflicting serious bodily injury or an assault with a weapon is between 3:00 and 4:00 p.m., which is also the peak hour for gang-related violence -- 3:00 and 4:00 in the afternoon.

OKONKWOAnd if you think about that, think about how young people move through our cities. Schools get out at three o'clock. We have young people who are traversing neighborhoods that aren't safe for them because of where they, themselves live. And I think, if we really want to make young people safe and we really want to keep everyone save in our cities, we have to rethink how it is that we protect young people. And it really isn't by focusing resources on police stops of young people later at night.

NNAMDIHere is Ben in Berryville, Va. Ben, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

BENHi. Well, thank you very much for taking my call. You know, the host made an interesting point. I mean, the guest made an interesting point that, you know, we assume that the home is a safe place for people to go to and that's why they want to have a curfew. But we also assume the home is a place where they can get something to eat. And what percentage of kids are on a free and assisted public lunch program in school? I mean, if they're hungry, they're going to be out.

NNAMDIOkay. You do make sense. Apparently we know that there are a lot of homes that are not necessarily the proper environments for the children in them. But right now we're going to have to take a short break. When we come back, we'll continue this conversation on youth curfews, their impact on public safety and, another important aspect, civil rights, which we'll be discussing when we come back. 800-433-8850. Does your child play on the streets late at night? Do you always know where your child is? You can send us email to kojo@wamu.org. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIWelcome back to our conversation on youth curfews and their impact on public safety and civil rights. We're talking with Sonia Kumar. She's staff attorney with the ACLU of Maryland. Daniel Okonkwo is executive director of DC Lawyers for Youth and a member of the WAMU Community Council. And Luke Broadwater is a reporter for The Baltimore Sun. One of the big concerns over the years about curfews is that they have a disproportionate impact on minorities. Has that issue been raised in Baltimore, Luke Broadwater?

BROADWATERYes, it's been raised by one of your guests, actually. And year, I mean, and I think that's going to be objectively true. I can't imagine that we won't see a majority of children picked up in poorer areas. It's just going to happen. And so people are -- and this is what your guest talks about often is this idea that, how are the police going to enforce the curfew? People don't carry around IDs on them all the time. How can you tell if a kid is 14? How can you tell if a kid is 15 or 16 or 17 or 18? You're going to have to stop people. And so does this really just give the police another tool to stop people for no real reason?

BROADWATERAt the same time, on the other side, you have the mayor who says, we need to identify our families who need help. And how do we identify those families? Well, if we take the kids to the curfew center, the families have to come in. And now we can hook them up with somebody who's going to give them some help.

NNAMDILuke, what's the new rule on IDs for kids found after curfews?

BROADWATERWell, they got to carry them. So in the -- that's a new part of the law. It was something that was written in. You have to have an ID. If you don't have an ID, then they can take you to the curfew center. So it's effectively an edict that if you are between the ages of -- if you're under 18, you got to have an ID on you.

NNAMDIStarting with you, Sonia, what does the hard evidence say about whether or not this will have a disproportionate impact on minorities?

KUMARLet me say this, 97 percent of the kids arrested in Baltimore City are black or brown. 99 percent of the kids arrested for marijuana possession -- which we sort of objectively know is sort of, there are parallel users, we can't say that there is sort of one race is using more than others -- are black kids in the city. I think that there is absolutely no question that this will disproportionately be visited upon black children, especially poor black children.

KUMARI think one of the points that is made about this idea about why we need this law and this idea of who needs to be inside is very much driven by stereotypes and assumptions about what it means for a black young person to be outside in our city and their parents. And if a young person is outside and it's a young person of color, it must be because he has a bad mother. And that's very much a part that's been folded into and sort of beneath the surface of the narrative about why we need this law.

NNAMDIDaniel Okonkwo, same question. Disproportionate impact on minorities?

OKONKWOSure, I mean, I think in -- here in D.C., our juvenile justice system is 99.9 percent black and brown. And I dare say that police in D.C. are not patrolling Spring Valley looking for kids. They're in Potomac Gardens. And, you know, I think this notion that we need to identify families that need assistance and get it to them is a noble one. But there are all -- we don't need a law-enforcement agency and a law-enforcement response and a criminal-justice system to deliver that assistance. We know where families who are in need live.

OKONKWOWe know where kids who are needing services reside and where they go to school. Yet we always want to use criminal-justice sanctions to deliver those services. And if -- Baltimore is going to say, you know what? We want to build centers for young people -- curfew centers. Why not build something more positive there on the front end, rather than waiting to do it on the back end with a criminal justice sanction?

NNAMDISonia, how does this identification requirement play to your civil-libertarian fears?

KUMARI mean, I -- it's horrifying right on some level. Because not only does the law affect young people who are under 18, it affects anyone who could arguably pass for a young person or anyone who thinks they might be likely to be stopped. So I work with an organization that works with unaccompanied homeless youth in Baltimore. And we work with young people who are up to age 25. And I was talking to a 21 year old who was stopped during Baltimore's daytime curfew. And so the ID requirement affects not only the young people, but also anybody else that can arguably fall under the curfew law.

NNAMDIBaltimore has a daytime curfew?

KUMARMany cities have daytime curfews that are also known as truancy laws. Our...

NNAMDIOh, yeah.

KUMARAnd so the curfew -- the daytime curfew in effect was 9:00 a.m. to 2:30. It has now been expanded to begin at 7:30 and go to 3:00. And I think this is an -- I want to say the reason that I was given by the bill's sponsor for why we expanded the daytime hours -- I asked, you know, why are we specifically covering the hours when kids are going to or from school? And he told me it was because -- and he is not the only one who said this, sort of in public statements -- that city officials didn't want kids buying junk food from stores on their way to and from school. And that was the reason why we were going to keep them from -- not allow them outside.

NNAMDIDaniel, you've worked with kids for years both on the job and off the job. Could asking kids to show IDs escalate confrontation unnecessarily or in some cases cause kids to panic and run?

OKONKWOAbsolutely. I think that there isn't an understanding by the bill sponsors of how young people and police interact. And, you know, we -- there's a concern, I think, for those of us who work with young people that police are not coming up to kids and saying, excuse me young man, may I see your ID please? These confrontations are usually -- these interactions, excuse me, are usually a lot more confrontational. And you know, young people, for what it's worth, don't always respond to police in the most polite manner. And so when you have a situation that has so much potential for escalation, you really expose young people to more criminal -- to criminal liability.

OKONKWOYou know, for example, in Washington D.C., merely pulling your hand away from a police officer can constitute assault on a police officer. So, you know, just bringing young people and police -- giving them more opportunities to interact in ways that are not -- that aren't confrontational can widen the net of young people that are exposed to the juvenile and criminal-justice system.

NNAMDI800-433-8850. Does your child carry an ID? How would you tell your child to respond if a police officer asked for it? 800-433-8850. Here is Bernard in Takoma Park, Md. Bernard, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

BERNARDThank you very much. I would like it if, when we discuss these things, we had recourse to a real principle of justice -- the kind of justice that people have talked about from Saint Augustine to Martin Luther King -- and that is, we should be very wary of any law or regulation that applies to people who are outside the group that enact it. Children are themselves a minority. They are non-enfranchised. The only reason that I can think of to curb their freedoms is that they're weaker and that they have poor impulse control, and any regulation of that kind is fine.

BERNARDBut if you say, we're going to make you go home because we're afraid that you're going to be hurt or you're going to hurt someone, you're applying the same logic, it seems to me, as if you say women cannot go out at night because they're prone to be victims of violence -- men cannot go out at night because they're prone to commit acts of violence. And the only difference is that the children can't vote.

NNAMDIOkay. Thank you very much. You make at least a relevant point. There's some nodding of approval in this room. Luke, Mayor Rawlings-Blake last year closed several youth community centers in Baltimore and wants to replace them with bigger, improved youth connection centers, where kids would be taken after curfew. What's the status of these youth connection centers and what's the plan for kids coming into them?

BROADWATERWell, it's interesting you bring that up because we had a -- we have a long tradition in Baltimore of rec centers. And there were many, many rec centers. And those have slowly been closed down by administrations, including under Mayor Rawlings-Blake. We did have a summer curfew center for our existing curfew. Now that this is being expanded, they're going to, I guess, rebrand that curfew center as a youth connection center and also open back up one of the rec centers that was closed and brand that as a youth connection center as well.

BROADWATERThe idea, well this is -- this will not be a criminal center. It will not be like a jail. In the past, kids just sort of sat on the floor and bided their time. It's supposed to be more like a community center now, with -- giving kids and families services. We'll see how that plays out. They're supposed to open next month. So we'll see how different they are than the curfew center of the past. Is it really a change or is it just a talking point?

NNAMDIWell, Luke, what kind of process must parents go through when they come to pick up their children at these centers? How serious can the fallout for parents and for guardians get if their kids are repeat customers?

BROADWATERWell, in the past, there were actually criminal charges that would go with violating the curfew on the parents' side. But that's been taken out of the bill. And they've increased the penalty to $500 -- a fine that could be levied. The sponsor of the bill says he hopes that fine isn't given very often. But it's in the law, so police could give you the fine if they want to.

NNAMDIDaniel, Sonia, I'd like you both to give me your take on the argument that tougher curfews are a way for city social services to get in touch with families that need extra support for their children. Sonia?

KUMARI think that is a hopelessly misguided idea. And I think every shred of evidence out there tells us the opposite. First of all, we are making, again, as I have said, a lot of assumptions about who needs services. And the fact that you're outside, alone, does not mean you need services. Second of all, particularly for young people who have experienced trauma or are otherwise at risk, law enforcement, especially in Baltimore -- which is one of the most heavily policed cities in the country and where we have a long track record of extremely violent interactions between the community and police -- there is an active distrust of police.

KUMARYoung people -- I -- the young people I know who are -- have been forced to live on the streets because of lack of services, flee on sight of police officers, whether or not they have done anything wrong, because they're so afraid of what will happen. And finally, those same kids also distrust a lot of these systems that are purported to help them, because they ignore the realities of what their lives are actually like. They ignore the informal ways in which family members help each other. They force kids to -- you know, they -- we sort of impose these assumptions about sort of what kids lives are like when we intervene in that way.

KUMARAnd so I think the best evidence out there is that it's far more useful to invest in proven strategies -- like methods that allow kids to self-refer for services, youth peer-based outreach, so using other youth to reach out to their peers. And in fact, as I mentioned in the alternate plan, this would -- these sort of types of supports were -- have already been identified as needed in our city shelter beds. Opening up rec centers -- I think it's a great irony that in lieu of opening up rec centers, we are now using them to host (word?) .

NNAMDIAnd, Daniel, is placing kids in these youth centers after dark a healthy step for kids and their parents? Or can it feel more punitive?

OKONKWOI don't think that it it's positive at all. I mean I think if young people are transported there as a result of a police stop, it will feel punitive. I also -- you also asked the question earlier of whether or not this exposes young people. I think, you know, what about these curfew centers? Are they going to have kids from different neighborhoods? Are there going to be existing conflicts that are -- can spill over into forcing young people into these places. I just -- it -- measures like this and these type solutions don't really take into account how young people are living their lives.

OKONKWOAnd using law enforcement, which is not the best vehicle to identify people in need of services, nor is law enforcement the agency that, or agencies that can deliver those services, just doesn't work.

NNAMDILuke, like D.C., Baltimore has had a curfew law on the books for years, but enforcing it seems to be haphazard at best. I'm curious how Baltimore's law-enforcement officers have reacted to the new law. Do you sense a real crackdown coming?

BROADWATERWell, it's interesting because, in the beginning, the police union was very much opposed to the proposed legislation. They sort of backed off and became neutral and stopped taking a public position on it, I think in part because they were in the midst of negotiating a raise and negotiating pension cuts to the existing pension system.

NNAMDITiming is everything.

BROADWATERRight. But their point at the time was it should be up to parents to take care of this. This isn't the police's job. It's -- already, we're overstretched responding to homicides, shootings, assaults. We can't be taking care of your kids too. But now that everybody is on board -- now that the police commissioner is on board, the mayor is on board, it's passed, it's become law, is there a new emphasis in enforcing both the prior curfew law and now this new one? Will we see an increased amount of stops and kids taken to these youth connection centers? I don't know.

BROADWATEROr will the rec officer...

NNAMDIWe're just about out of time.

BROADWATER...always have something more important to do?

NNAMDISonia, the ACLU has successfully litigated to overturn curfew laws around the country in the past, including Frederick, Md. What are your next steps now that Baltimore's law is on the books, in twenty seconds or less?

KUMARWe'll be absolutely working with the community to monitor how it's implemented and sort of taking our cues from that.

NNAMDISonia Kumar is staff attorney with the ACLU of Maryland. Thank you for joining us.

KUMARThank you for having me.

NNAMDIDaniel Okonkwo is executive director of DC Lawyers for Youth and a member of the WAMU Community Council. Daniel, always a pleasure.

OKONKWOAlways a pleasure. Thank you.

NNAMDIAnd Luke Broadwater is a reporter with The Baltimore Sun. Luke Broadwater, thank you for joining us.

BROADWATERThanks.

NNAMDIAnd thank you all for listening. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIComing up tomorrow on "The Kojo Nnamdi Show," teaching computers to understand sarcasm. Tech Tuesday explores why companies and government agencies are designing new programs to understand acronyms, slang and vernacular on social media. Then at 1:00, hot summer nights mean lightning bugs and mosquitoes. What to expect from our region's six- and eight-legged pests in the months ahead. "The Kojo Nnamdi Show," noon till 2:00 tomorrow on WAMU 88.5 and streaming at kojoshow.org.