Guest Post On Los Angeles & Orange County Curfew Laws
OC & LA curfew law, is a curfew that kind of like sweeps children under eighteen from the streets of California. The curfew starts either at 10pm or at 11pm depending on the city and ends at 5am. During this time any minor aged child under eighteen years found alone on the streets, can be picked up by law enforcement officers and taken to police headquarters where he/she is held until his/her parents or guardians comes for him/her.
However, children who are accompanied by their parents are not arrested. Children with emergencies or recognized authorization from school or working place are also exempted. At the moment, there are about two hundred enforcement officers spread out all over the state, that carry out the curfew and overseen by officers from County district attorney, Departmental Sheriffs and many other local agencies.
The objective of the curfew is to reduce the number of youths and teenagers from the streets during the curfew time, the time that most crimes occur. There is an assumption that sweeping teenagers from the streets can help in reducing juvenile crime as well as keeping them out of trouble. It also prevents them from joining illegal gangs which pose a challenge to the security of the state.
Violation of the law may attract severe consequences including jail time of up to six months for the parents, community service for the child, getting locked behind the bars and several other penalties and fines. During this time, those minors who are found driving while drunk or under the influence of drugs are charged with the offense of a DUI, an offense that may attract additional severe punishment.
Victims of this law may require experienced curfew law lawyers to defend them in order to win the case or get a less severe punishment. In Los Angeles, there is an ongoing appeal to change the laws, especially for students. The appeal was proposed by Tony Cardenas, a council member. It is aimed at exempting students heading to school from tickets of truant. Penalties and fines will also be eliminated in the new policy.
The appeal saw an initial breakthrough when the Los Angeles Juvenile court’s presiding judge gave new guidelines for the courts to eliminate the fairly expensive tickets of two hundred and fifty U.S dollars for students who could prove their lateness to the officers.
The appeal has also received massive support from the students who gathered around Los Angeles School Police Department chief who had also came to show his support to the changes in the policy.
The reason for changing the law is that, some students intentionally refused to go to school to avoid the ticket and other forms of punishment associated with lateness. This shows that the law was doing more harm to the students than good.
Additionally, the research done by Daniel M, on The Impact of Juvenile Curfew Laws in California, the law has never achieved its objectives, right from the time it was introduced up to now. Violence and crime among the youth and teenagers have not reduced as intended by the law, and if there is any reduction, then it is a result of another measure and not the curfew.
Guest Post Author:
Christopher J McCann is a DUI attorney in Beverly Hills, California. He can help your family with Orange County Curfew law tickets for those also facing drunk driving or drug related criminal charges. Check out his complete guide to California minor laws by Christopher J McCann. For things like California teen driving laws to almost every other CA minor law in the book!
Article Reference Sources:
http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/local/orange_county&id=9097744
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_the_curfew_laws_for_minors_in_Orange_County_California
http://www.hslda.org/docs/nche/000010/199806151.pdf
http://wcr.sonoma.edu/v1n2/males.html
http://198.170.117.218/pubs/curfew/curfewexec.html
