Nice Not So Nice For Teens — Citywide Curfew, Video Camera Enforced, Begins Next Week

Nice, where young 'uns behave. Image by HGruber via Flickr

The city of Orleans, birthplace of Joan of Arc, already has a partial one in effect. Now the Mediterranean city of Nice plans to impose a curfew between 11:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m. on all kids younger than 13 who are out in the streets without an adult chaperone.

“I want a city where the honest feel at ease and wrong-doers are nervous,”said Nice’s mayor, and France’s Industry Minister, Christian Estrosi. Juvenile delinquence, thanks to increased policing, is down 13 percent in the city since the start of 2009, he said. The city of 360,000 plans to enforce the new law using 550 video-cameras now being installed, all of which will be up and running by April 2010.

Any child found alone on the streets will be returned to their home, he said.

The plan, which I read about in Liberation, a leftist Parisian daily, has already provoked more than 400 comments on the paper’s website.