Daytime Curfew Helping Keep Kids in School
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This time last year Jackson city leaders passed a law that enforced a daytime curfew for underage school students. Now a year later, we wanted to look at how the ordinance was used throughout the school year. Juvenile Court Services Director Amy Jones said several citations were sent out in the beginning of this past school year, but that number started dropping as the year went on. The last three months of school, no citations were sent out at all. A total of 33 citations have been sent out since the law went into effect in August. Only three of those had to appear in court for a second offense. Though the ordinance was somewhat controversial when it was first brought to the table, Jones said they are pleased with its outcome. “The biggest opposition that I heard was [from] people [who] were afraid that law enforcement was going to use this to target a specific group of kids or that it was going to be used really without any operation of common sense and that kids could be harassed and things like that. We really haven’t seen that.” said Jones. Jones said most of the citations were given during routine traffic stops during school hours.
