Condemned by the Curfew

Ubiquitous today, teen curfews have been, since the late nineteenth century, one of the most persistent methods of youth-conscious policing. Curfew bells, sirens, and whistles announcing the day’s end and the hour at which children should vacate the streets were a popular solution to delinquency and child vulnerability in Canadian and US towns and cities. Juvenile nocturnal curfew ordinances gained currency in three specific periods: the closing decades of the nineteenth century, during the Second World War and early postwar era, and at the turn of the twenty-first century. Each era gave rise to a historically specific rationale for deploying