Against a backdrop of widespread panic about children's safety and the unru
liness of teenagers, efforts to remove young people from public space are b
ecoming increasingly pervasive. Public space is being constructed as adult
space through legal mechanisms such as curfews, which seek to curtail young
people's spatial freedoms and contain them within their homes. Ostensibly
motivated by a desire to reduce youth crime and victimisation, curfews refl
ect a contemporary preoccupation with achieving social control through the
control of space. This is certainly the case in the US - the Western nation
where juvenile curfews are most prevalent, despite rhetoric about the 'fun
damental' nature of individual freedoms. In this paper, critical discussion
of the American situation provides a backdrop for considering curfews rece
ntly imposed in Paeroa and Te Kuiti, two New Zealand towns. It is contended
that these curfews were as much about enforcing a particular notion of 'pa
rental responsibility' as controlling young people themselves. We conclude
that a discourse of rights provides a particularly strong foundation for ar
guing against curfews. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.