[Crito]

Philadelphia instituted a youth curfew because local highschool kids developed a interest in flash mobs. Not flash mobs where lots of people in a train station start dancing all of a sudden, but rather flash mobs where they all start texting all of their friends that they are going to all meet at 15th and South Street in 10 minutes to riot and loot.

I'll grant that in most cases youth curfews are probably senseless, but in some cases they are used as desperate measures by cities looking to curb random organized violence committed categorically by bored teenagers on hot summer nights.

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/10/philadelphia-fig...

I was living in that city while that stuff was going full swing; it was truly insane. When you walked through areas that were frequently targeted and looked down the alleys, you would see that every single alley on the street was filled with cops, some in riot gear, and some on horseback, and paddy wagons. They would just be standing around, waiting for the call for where the flash mob would be that night.

[worklogin]

If it were adults, would you be as casual about people being told to stay in their homes because of some troublemakers?

[Crito]

"Teenagers" is a pretty tight age-range and those Philadelphia riots were large enough to overwhelm the police; if that age range were expanded to 14-70 and a similar percentage of that group were rioting, then that is a massive riot.

A curfew was implemented during the 1992 LA riots and enforced by the California Army National Guard. I think that is the sort of situation which you are describing, and I think that a curfew is appropriate in that sort of situation.

Would I be casual about it? Casual is a weird word; nothing about that sort of situation is casual. I would support such a curfew however.

[alexeisadeski3]

I suppose many of them would.