Mayor Wants Teens Home Earlier

By Margaret Lyons in News on Jan 8, 2008 9:31PM

Mayor Daley wants to push Chicago's teen curfew up to 10pm on weeknights and 11pm on weekends, 30 minutes earlier than the current curfews, in an attempt to curb teen violence.

Mayor Daley says “the gang-bangers, drug dealers and thugs who use young people for their illegal operations” may not appreciate a new curfew, but he says he believes “it’s time to extend it”.

Daley made the announcement at a press conference at Hirsch Metropolitan High School on the South Side, where he was publicizing the results of a survey conducted by the Uhlich Children’s Advantage Network, a Chicago-based social services organization. Their eighth annual teen gun survey says that one-third of of teenagers know someone who's been shot, including 59 percent of black teenagers and 23 percent of white teenagers. (Last year's survey said 68 percent of black teens and 30 percent of white teens knew someone.) Daley says curfews have already worked to decrease crime against young people--during the first year of the curfew's implementation, according to the Sun-Times "398 fewer kids under 17 were victims of crime." [S-T, WBBM]