Criminalizing DC Youth: The Politics of Curfews & the Need for Community Control

As DC officials consider a renewed juvenile curfew in the name of “public safety,” a familiar pattern is emerging: the criminalization of working-class Black youth and the expansion of state control over our communities. Curfews do not address the root causes of harm—lack of resources, disinvestment, and exclusion from decision-making. Instead, they give police broader authority to stop, surveil, and detain our youth simply for existing in public space.

This Assata Shakur Study Group session will examine how curfew policies function as tools of social control, not solutions to violence. We will break down the political logic behind “tough on crime” approaches and expose how they shift responsibility away from the city and onto youth themselves. At the same time, we will explore PACA’s vision for community control, one where residents, not police, have real decision-making power over safety, resources, and the conditions that shape our lives.

Food will be provided!
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Pan-African Community Action (PACA) is part of the historic and global movement for Pan-Africanism, or the liberation and unification of Africa and of African people on the continent and in the diaspora, under the economic system of scientific socialism. As part of the Pan-African movement, PACA is a grassroots group of African/Black people organizing for community-based power.