Ruby Reeves may live in the suburb of Webster Groves, but the 17-year-old feels the sting of St. Louis' juvenile curfew, a policy she says alienates teenagers rather than helps them.
"You create a hard line, people will find a way to get around it. I think that all the curfew is doing is creating a further barrier for teenagers to exist," she said. "I don't think it'll effectively curb dangerous behavior. I think it'll encourage it."
For teenagers like Reeves, summer means later nights with friends and fewer responsibilities. For St. Louis officials, however, it brings safety concerns. To address large teen gatherings — or "teen takeovers" — the city enacted a temporary juvenile curfew through Sept. 8.
Running from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. in Downtown and Downtown West, the order applies to anyone 17 or younger and supplements the city's year-round minor curfew. The standard hours for juveniles in the city are 12 a.m. to 6 a.m. on Friday and Saturday nights and 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. Sunday through Thursday.
St. Louis is one of 400 towns, cities and counties that have implemented youth curfews, according to the National Youth Rights Association. For law enforcement, downtown presents challenges that neighborhoods often do not, said St. Louis Metropolitan Police Chief Robert Tracy.
"Our biggest worry about Downtown and Downtown West is compared to the neighborhoods, where the neighborhood has a social construct [and] actually can look out after each other," he said. "When it comes to downtown, we don't have that."
Instead, Tracy warned that the city's downtown has become a destination for young people from across the region. The resulting conflicts can escalate into fights or dangerous behavior, including fireworks battles seen in previous summers.
Kenya Brumfield-Young, a criminologist and associate professor at St. Louis University, said juvenile curfews by themselves do little to reduce youth crime or violence in the long term.
She also noted there can be unintended consequences to targeted curfews.
"When we do that, what we're doing is actually just moving them into other neighborhoods," she explained. "We're talking about displacement and transference."
Curfews also require another discussion: enforcement. Deploying officers to targeted areas or neighborhoods can increase the chances of police contact with young people without addressing the reasons young people gather in the first place. She cautions that those interactions can be especially dangerous for youth of color.
"When we move them on, it's not just moving them on into another jurisdiction or to another district to 'deal with them,'" she said. "We also have to look at how we can better engage them."
As a teen herself, Reeves has ideas on what that engagement might look like. She argues the city should spend less time telling young people where they cannot go and more time creating places where they can gather safely.
"I love St. Louis, but I can't say that there's really a strong place for community and being, especially with young people. … I hope that I can see in the future that St. Louis … can invest more time, effort and even money into creating [third] spaces so that our community can thrive," Reeves said.
Without dedicated spaces, teenagers are often left to their own devices, which can clash with their natural biology.
Ashley Wilkinson, clinical site supervisor for Provident Behavioral Health, said teenagers' brains are still under construction. The prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that governs decision-making and weighing consequences, doesn't fully mature until about age 25.
That means adolescents are naturally more likely to act impulsively, particularly in emotionally charged group settings.
At the same time, Wilkinson said teens are wired to seek connection and belonging. For Gen Z and Gen Alpha, whose childhoods have been shaped by smartphones and social media, gathering in large groups can feel exciting yet overwhelming.
Those settings can be ripe for conflict or escalation. Teens' nervous systems, she explained, need "some kind of release or it needs some kind of soothing, and things that feel, in the moment, very cathartic could also be associated with high-risk behaviors."
Wilkinson said parents should avoid making curfews the first conversation after a problem occurs. She noted that "connection is the foundation for the correction." Instead of responding to issues with shame or immediate punishment, parents should establish expectations early and build on trust.
Former police officer and youth mentor Chris Randall Sr. said curfews address the symptoms, not the causes, of youth violence.
"We didn't just get here by happenstance," Randall said. "It is a wealth of things that have come together that has made the stew of violence amongst teens."
He pointed to food insecurity, gaps in education, limited youth programming and mental health support as interconnected issues that require a community-wide response.
Brumfield-Young, the criminologist, said that media representation skews public perception, too.
"We get very inundated with negative images of young people engaged in these large firework wars, or engaged like the Kia boys that were stealing cars. … Young people behaving well don't circulate as quickly," she said. "When we see these large groups of young people, then an area is perceived or deemed unsafe."
City officials maintain that the curfew is only one part of a broader public safety strategy.
Marvin Teer Jr., director of the Office of Violence Prevention, said the perception that large numbers of teenagers are responsible for downtown disturbances doesn't always match reality. He said many of the 41 young people brought to the city's reunification center during the Fourth of July weekend were from outside St. Louis; relatively few were involved in criminal activity.
The city has also partnered with organizations such as the Mathews-Dickey Boys' & Girls' Club to expand evening programming and is exploring additional events to give teens safe places to gather.
Teer said the city wants young people to help shape those opportunities.
"We really need to engage those kids to ask them what they want," he said.
For teenagers frustrated by the new restrictions, Teer said city leaders want to hear directly from them. The goal, he said, is to create more places where they want to be.
"We'd love to hear from kids," Teer said. "Every time we have an engagement with those children, [we ask], 'Well, what do you like to do?'"
For teens like Reeves, however, the questions now being posed by adults and city officials feel more like a challenge than an invitation.
"I feel like a lot of the messaging and atmosphere around teenagers, at least where I live, is that we're a danger or that we're unwelcome, we're kind of untrustworthy in some way. … I'd like to see areas where we can socialize and be ourselves, where we aren't punished or watched or made to feel like we don't belong," Reeves said.
For more on the implementation of juvenile curfews in response to summer violence in St. Louis and why they may not be long-term solutions, listen to "St. Louis on the Air" on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or click the play button below.
"St. Louis on the Air" brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region. The show is produced by Miya Norfleet, Emily Woodbury, Danny Wicentowski, Elaine Cha and Alex Heuer. Layla Halilbasic is our production assistant. The audio engineer is Aaron Doerr.
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