There is a bill working its way through the Indiana legislature that would impose a daytime curfew on all people under 18. The pertinent part is section 12.

Daytime curfews are a bad idea for any number of reasons. First, there is the fact that the few controlled studies which have been done show that daytime curfews do not lower juvenile crime rates.

Under the proposed law a teen out driving or walking can be stopped and questioned just for being a teen. Being a minor is not probable cause! Daytime curfews also assume a person is guilty until proven innocent.

And what constitutes school hours? Within the Fort Wayne metro area there are at least four different school districts and dozens of private schools. If you move out into the surrounding areas there are dozens of school districts. The calendars and school hours are not uniform among these schools. And in Columbus there is even more variety, because some schools are on a year-round calendar.

Enforcement efforts should be focused on those minors who are enrolled in school. The schools KNOW if they are not in attendance and can deal with truancy. There is no reason to pass a sweeping curfew law that opens the door to harrassment of innocent kids.

They did something similar to this when I was in highschool.

It was really just an excuse for the cops in our boring town to harrass teenagers for lack of better things to do.

Heya! This is exactly the sort of thing that flag-and-cross-waving right-wingers adore, isn't it? It's more of that old "law-and-order" schtick. I've been saying it for years, a totalitarian who wraps himself in the US flag and carries a cross around is no better than a totalitarian who wraps himself in a red flag and burns Bibles. This curfew proposal is a natural and inevitable consequence of what has come to replace conservative thought in our country--dogmatic, totalitarian, knee-jerk, authority worship.