Urban discusses the effectiveness of a court-ordered juvenile curfew enforcement program known as Nightwatch.  Her questions include:  Do juveniles who participate in Nightwatch re-offend less?  and  If they do re-offend less, why?   The Nightwatch program operates using sanctions for non-compliance and rewards for compliance, which predicts that juveniles with a high certainty of punishment for curfew violation will have a low incidence of non-compliance and subsequent offending.  Results indicate that juveniles participating in Nightwatch recidivated at significantly lower levels than a comparison group, but not for the reasons expected by court officials.  Little support was found for deterrence, but participation in Nightwatch reduced time out of the house and was a significant predictor of subsequent offending.

The Deterrent Effects of Curfews: An Evaluation of Juvenile Probationers (Criminal Justice: Recent Scholarship) PDF

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