Abstract
For decades, in the summertime, America has confined certain of its youth in what are essentially open-air heat camps. In city after city, camp-form is established through the enactment of warm-weather juvenile curfews which keep the youth at home or in state-sponsored centers during summer nights and, increasingly, during days as well. Local governments justify these curfews with general notions of “public safety,” including to protect the youth they confine. But the laws are not benevolent. Reducing youth mobility by curfew results in exclusion, oversurveillance, and potentially lethal heat punishment of the youth, possibly in violation of the Eighth Amendment. As the Anthropocene Era progresses, governments will need to reconsider how to protect their youth from physical harm and heat without putting their humanity at risk.
Recommended Citation
Norrinda Brown, Heat Camps: Juvenile Curfews, Extreme Heat & the Eighth Amendment, 82 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 969 (2025).Available at: https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/wlulr/vol82/iss3/4
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Constitutional Law Commons, Environmental Law Commons, Health Law and Policy Commons, Human Rights Law Commons, Juvenile Law Commons