"No good thing can happen to a child who is out after 10 o'clock or 11 o'clock at night," said John F. Street, Philadelphia's former mayor, at the opening of one of the city's 11 curfew centers in early 2007. In the twilight of his administration, Street imposed a citywide midnight weekend curfew for children under 18 and opened centers across the city in an attempt to quell the rampant juvenile violence problem.

For a while, the program seemed to make an impact. The first center opened in the Point Breeze neighborhood of South Philadelphia two years ago and, according to the city, "juvenile shootings dropped 50 percent in the 1st District and 45 percent in the 17th District – the two districts served by the center" in the eight months following its opening.

"Since we opened the South Philadelphia Curfew Center, there has been a dramatic reduction in violence among young people," Mayor Street was quoted as saying in a city press release.  "We are encouraged by this and will have a total of 12 curfew centers in operation by the end of this year."

Shortly after this announcement, I spent the night in a relatively new curfew center at North Philadelphia's Cecil B. Moore Recreation Center. It was a rainy Saturday night, which undoubtedly kept many potential curfew violators indoors, but around 2am a couple of teenagers were brought in. The two teens – a 16-year-old girl and 17-year-old boy – were picked up nearby, talking on the street.

The two immediately met with friendly intake coordinators and their parents were called. They were then placed, sheepish but smiling, into the rec center's gym, where they could play pool, watch movies and eat snacks until their parents arrived. The boy's mother had no car, so unless his mother accepted a complimentary police escort, he'd have to stay at the center until morning. The girl's mother was at work, but when she arrived she would also need to meet with a counselor, who would have the option of recommending the family to various prevention or behavioral health services, if necessary.

Rev. Parris Bowens, the supervisor that night, told me sometimes the center takes in up to 20 kids on weekend nights, and many are not nearly as compliant—or sober—as  these two .

"[This curfew center] is needed in our community to keep our young people safe," he explained. "It helps identify kids at risk, first of all getting them off the streets, and then getting them information through the volunteers we have in the building, and giving them hope. And the same thing for the parents."

Watching the center in action—the caring professionals, safe environment and enthusiastic volunteers—I left Cecil B. Moore encouraged by the program's potential to make a difference in kid's lives. Getting the community involved in the process and holding parents accountable for their children's whereabouts seemed like the most logical answers to a youth population out of control.

Since then, however, a new mayor has taken office and the promising statistics once touted by the Street administration have been called into question. In fact, it seems the entire Curfew Center program is now in danger of being shut down.

Donald Schwartz, the Deputy Mayor for Health and Opportunity under Mayor Nutter discussed the viability of the Curfew Center program at a recent Philly Stat meeting.

"The peak time for juvenile violent crime offenses to occur is actually just after young people get out of school, around 3pm in the afternoon," said Schwartz. "If we look at juvenile crime—one of the goals of the curfew centers—we see that the time of lowest rates of juvenile crime is actually during the time that the curfew centers are open."

It was also pointed out in a WHYY report on the meeting that curfew centers referred kids to social services more than 4,000 times, but only 41 actual connections to those services have been confirmed by the city, which currently spends $4.1 million dollars a year on the program.

Deputy Mayor Schwartz suggested there may be better ways to spend the money to combat youth violence. 

"From a policy point of view, the question is whether to consider this an experiment that has issues and modify it, or to consider it an experiment that still needs to be observed for some period of time," he said.

When asked if the centers could be shut down, Schwartz said the city is considering all options. A decision will be made by the end of the month.

So would it be better for the city to invest in after-school programs rather than curfew centers? Or to modify the centers' intake-and-release process so kids and families would be more likely to seek social services?

I'm not sure what the answer is, but roughly four-fifths of the kids brought in to the centers were referred to social services, so they're clearly still reaching at-risk kids, if only by identifying them. They also provide a place for police to take kids at night, allowing them to pick up curfew violators, as opposed to merely scolding them and leaving them in the streets.

Regardless of the program's effect on the larger violence problem—which should be targeted from every angle the city can afford—it's tough to argue with Mayor Street's original assertion: No good comes from a teenager roaming the streets after 12am.  Especially in a city where bullets fall more often than rain on sticky summer nights.

-c