As a general rule, public policy set in the aftermath of a crime against a child winds up being hysterical and completely beside the point. But then, so does pretty much anything put forward by Giorgio Mammoliti - a headline-hungry city councillor who once protested a nude beach by whipping off his shirt during a council meeting.
Two strikes, then, against the latest push to impose a curfew on teens.
Last fall, amid Toronto's wave of gun crime, Mr. Mammoliti produced a typically whacked-out solution. With almost all the violence being committed by offenders aged 16 and older, the way to stop it was to ban anyone 15 or under from going out in public after 11 p.m. With even the police chief voicing his opposition, the proposal was defeated by a 30-10 council vote.
This prompted another brainwave from Mr. Mammoliti: Council was so dysfunctional that he might ask the province to take it over. But nobody else seemed particularly bothered, and that was the last we heard about curfews until this week.
Now, we're in the aftermath of one of those isolated incidents so shocking that it gives licence to a disproportionate response - last weekend's assault on a 12-year-old girl by another of roughly the same age outside an all-ages event at Steam Night Club.
As the news broke this week, every adult had the same reaction. It wasn't the violence outside a nightclub that surprised us; it was the fact that pre-teen girls were out in the entertainment district at 2:20 a.m.
In itself, our surprise was evidence that it's hardly a common phenomenon: Most of us had trouble fathoming how any kid that young would be let out unsupervised at that time of night, or even that most would want to go out then.
But for publicity-mad local politicians, it was licence to play to society's most hysterical impulses. And so up popped Mr. Mammoliti's colleague, Frances Nunziata, resurrecting his idea but bumping the proposed curfew up to 10:30.
When it emerged yesterday that another curfew vote can't happen so close to the last, Ms. Nunziata began pushing new restrictions on all-ages events - including a ban on having them in bars with liquor licences and a minimum age of 16.
That latter proposal is less odious, since it wouldn't prevent law-abiding 15-year-olds from catching a late movie or hanging out at Starbucks; it also wouldn't lend itself to arbitrary enforcement and inevitable complaints of discrimination. But it suffers from the same problem: It's a sweeping solution befitting a non-existent widespread phenomenon, and the wrong solution to the more isolated problem that actually exists.
The real issue is not that the victim was allowed into a late-night club; it's that nobody prevented her from going there in the first place. Either she had permission, which suggests horrible parenting, or she snuck out, which suggests disciplinary issues and possibly neglectful supervision.
If she'd been prohibited from entering Steam, it's a fair bet she'd have gotten into trouble elsewhere. A public park, maybe - or if a curfew was in place, a friend's basement or the apartment of someone old enough to afford one. There, unlike the nightclub, she'd have been able to consume liquor and engage in all manner of unsupervised activities.
As with most other bad habits, the solution isn't to push partying kids underground. Nor is it to punish older teens for the behaviour of the odd 12-year-old. In fact, only in cases where neglect is leading children astray should governments get involved. Otherwise, it's up to parents - not politicians - to get their kids to bed on time.
