/ David Pescovitz / 9:43 am Sat Aug 7, 2010

Mall requires kids to have adult escorts

A mall in Cincinnati, Ohio is now requiring anyone under 18 to have a 21+ escort with them after 4pm on Fridays and Saturdays. Apparently, security guards at all the entrances will card shoppers and provide wristbands. From WCPO:
Management at Tri-County Mall says it should make for a more pleasant shopping experience for their customers.

"Being youth, and being in large numbers unsupervised, they tend to get loud and rowdy and detract from a comfortable shopping atmosphere.,” said General Manager Michael Lyons.

"Mall implements 'youth escort policy'" (Thanks, Charles Pescovitz!)

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  2. I support this fully. Parents often drop their teens off at the mall like it’s daycare.

    1. Teens? Daycare?

      There is certainly misbehavior where teens congregate, but keeping them isolated and overseen just pushes the problem back. I want my children to be able to function independently, and part of that is allowing them some time to act without oversight (not much yet, as they’re still young, but eventually and gradually)

      On a related note, there was some protest when the Mall of America instituted its policy, as teen workers were unhappy having their taxes support a project they were disenfranchised from (the mall’s construction used public funding, which some felt should have made the mall commons a public space)

    1. I don’t understand this at all. Most of the kids I see there in the evening are just sitting around and with a coke they bought at the food court. Meanwhile the brunt of teen shopping is done earlier in the day when moms are dragged along to make purchases.

      1. Yea, that reminds me on how Malls held free concerts to get kids to bring their parents since its the parents that do most of the shopping/paying. Discovery channel thing.

  4. This is actually not the first mall to implement this. The Mall of America in Bloomington, MN has been doing this since the mid-90’s, as a method to cut down gang behaviours.

  6. As a former mall employee – it’s about damn time. Kids get dropped off like it’s school and our job to supervise them.

  7. Teenagers have lots of cash and no self-discipline. Making it harder for them to spend their money is the last thing I’d expect a mall to do.

    1. “Teenagers have lots of cash and no self-discipline.”
      No, they don’t. Teenagers have no cash whatsoever, because they don’t have jobs (or if they do, it’s £5 an hour at Asda). You think the obsession by advertisers with the 18-30 demographic is for fun? It’s because that’s the age where you start getting jobs that pay enough to buy things, but you don’t have so many responsibilities hoovering up your cash.

      I hope the comment “well they’re saying goodbye to all shopper traffic now” was sarcastic, too.

      Really, kids don’t help themselves not get discriminated against like this. They genuinely do go around in groups being a nuisance, which is why policies like this happen. I guess it means that kids are still the one group it’s okay to discriminate against.

      1. Yes, they do have lots of disposable income. Summer jobs (even £5 an hour at Asda), babysitting, and allowances add up. Kids might not be buying $400 suits or new TVs every weekend, but that’s not the point. They still spend their cash as soon as they get it.
        Advertisers target the 18-30 demographic for precisely the reasons you point out, but the teenage crowd doesn’t really need advertising to entice it to spend.

        1. General Specific, as a teen who worked hard to save up cash for University (a shocker, I know, a fiscally responsible teen!), I seriously resent your painting of all teens with the “Wildly unrepentant spoiled brat” brush.

          I was saving up cash to go away to school as soon as I was able; another friend of mine lived 15 minutes outside of town in a rural-ish area and had no access to a car to learn to drive given that her single mother needed the car near on constantly to work, so she couldn’t even get a job or go into town when she wanted to most of the time. Where do we fit in your lovely scheme of middle-class spend-o-mania?

          I’m more in agreement with commenters like Max here. Way to side with the people who would punish the masses for the 1 percent of assholes and douchecanoes out there.

          I also fully agree with the comments regarding the question of where else teens are supposed to go. Suppose I don’t go to church, anon #28. There goes youth group at church for me (as was the case for me in high school). A lot of youth centers I’ve been to are run down, badly funded, and full of the kids I wanted to escape from in high school (such as the drug dealers and kids who bullied me mercilessly).

          I’m not saying I have a solution, which is unfortunate; I feel as though I escaped being a minor and never really looked back as maybe I should have. But let’s face up to the fact that the system is flawed, and that all rules like this will do is create new animosity.

          1. Um, are you sure you’re reading my comments? I never painted anyone with the “wildly unrepentant spoiled brat” brush.

          2. I haven’t really been following the discussion, but I have to give you major points for the introduction of the term ‘douchecanoe’, which I hadn’t previously heard but will be using extensively henceforth!

      2. “Really, kids don’t help themselves not get discriminated against like this. They genuinely do go around in groups being a nuisance, which is why policies like this happen. I guess it means that kids are still the one group it’s okay to discriminate against.”

        Here, let me try that.

        Really, black people don’t help themselves not get discriminated against like this. They genuinely do go around in groups being nuisance, which is why policies like this happen.

        That sort of thing would never fly. So why does it fly against kids?

        No, most kids do NOT go around being a nuisance. For every kid I see that’s a nuisance, I can point out several parents and authority figures who are themselves exemplary examples of substandard self-discipline, selfishness, and a total lack of respect for others.

        If unattended, rowdy children are a problem, kick them out of the mall. Their parents will likely not be dropping them back off at that mall again if they get into trouble every time they go there.

        A policy like this does nothing more than punish everyone for the misbehavior of a few. All this does is continue to craft our society into one hostile to children and to teach them that authority’s purpose is not to protect and maintain order, but to contain and oppress “trouble” people. Already their schooling is filled with strict zero-tolerance policies, and many children are daily treated as criminals in schools where armed police keep the order.

        1. You obviously haven’t been following.

          Let’s recap:

          Groups of teens have been causing real, actual problems. These problems seem to be happening in areas that have limited resources for teens, which is damned sad.

          Security is not allowed to touch these children, even to break up fights, the malls cannot kick them out, and the police won’t pick these kids up when they cause problems, so what were we supposed to do?

          Let me point out that not one person who is against this policy has presented a solution for the mall.

          Now, I don’t know about this specific mall, but this is my experience with a similar policy.

          I began working in my local mall when I was about 17. I was a fiscally responsible teen, especially because I had a baby to care for. When I began working there, the teens were not a problem. Sure, they weren’t perfect, and some adults didn’t like it (particularly the senior mall-walkers) but that’s not anything new, and it was not the cause of this policy change.

          Over the next two years, the teens became a problem. Let me restate this: Their behavior changed, the dynamics of the situation changed, and it was a big problem for everyone else at the mall, patrons and employees alike.

          Let me be clear: I am not talking about normal teen behavior, or behavior imagined by baseless adult fears and discrimination, but deliberately hostile and disruptive behavior.

          This behavior from these teens was startling and new. It was not how we behaved as teens, and not how the teens from a few years ago behaved. Obviously something has changed (I think it’s problems with over-crowded schools and shitty parents, but as an involved, homeschooling mom, I’m biased.) and it’s caused a change in these kids.

          After the first year, security would call the police to come pick up the unruly kids. The police would pick them up, contact their parents, and they’d be banned for two weeks. This seemed to help, but then the police stopped responding to calls. They would still come out and take a report, but it would be hours later, generally after the mall had closed, and they wouldn’t take the kids. In the meantime, security had to sit in the office with the kids. If the child in question was the opposite gender, two officers had to sit with the child. The mall had to spend money hiring additional officers, which sucked.

          We complained about this, and the police chief informed our mall manager that they had more important things to do than pick up unruly kids, and that they would not come out right then unless there was an in-progress assault, a case of shoplifting, or something actually illegal. Being a jerk to other mall patrons, running, screaming, and practicing parkour on the benches no longer counted, since those things weren’t actually illegal. I can see the point of the police. In the triage scale, car accidents and actual crimes are more important than asshole behavior on private property,

          During the next year, even more teens started coming, and they all started acting worse. There were more fights, more incidences of shoplifting, more vandalism, and lower sales. The local news ran stories about the gangs of kids roaming the malls, and adults stopped shopping in the mall.

          The store managers, including myself at age 19, repeatedly asked the mall management to respond to this problem. Mall management made it clear that they were not allowed to put children out onto the streets when they misbehaved. They had vetted this with their attorneys, who told them that they would be liable if the children were hurt after that.

          (And can you imagine the legal and PR problems if a child disappeared or was injured in an accident after being kicked out of the mall?)

          Security was not allowed to touch these children, even to break up fights, and we couldn’t kick them out, so what were we supposed to do? We brought in more security twice, and it did not alleviate the problem.

          When I was 21, the mall began a new policy. Children were not allowed to be in the mall without an adult on the weekends, after 6 p.m. on Friday. The only difference between the mall in the post and my mall is that we didn’t bother with wristbands.

          It has been WONDERFUL.

          Sales began climbing slowly, then shot up after two news reports about the new policy aired. My store is no longer looking at closure (although I don’t work there anymore). Shoplifting has dropped to it’s pre-problem levels, and fights and vandalism are almost non-existent.

          Reports of crime and teen injury haven’t risen, so this obviously isn’t as detrimental to teens as some of these posters would have you believe. Teens are still free to gather on the weekdays, and even on the weekends with adult supervision.

          Mall fights are almost nonexistent, and the teen work force in the mall has stayed steady. There hasn’t been any visible backlash from our community over this policy, and teens still come shop, and still come work.

          All in all, I have to say that this policy has been wildly successful.

          Now, I’m not a child-hater, or any other pejorative that’s been thrown around this thread. I’m the mother to three children, that I homeschool, and I’m still too young to run for President, so I’m obviously not telling these kids to ‘get off my lawn’.

          I recognize that these teens, these people, need to have more of our community resources devoted to them. I have tried to work with our local City Council to make our community centers less senior-centric, so that these kids have somewhere fun to go. The parents of local teens didn’t care enough to support it, and the seniors really did protest at the idea of the teens coming on to ‘their lawn’, so it failed.

          (I grew up in a city with great community centers, with basketball courts, parks, art classes, books from the local library that are changed weekly, and so on. I wish we had that here.)

          As someone who was recently a teen, and now a mother, I absolutely sympathize with the plight of these teens, quite a few of whom are well-behaved kids, but I also wanted to keep my job, which wasn’t going to happen if my store closed due to the lack of sales.

          And, really, if our mall hadn’t found some way to address this problem and regain sales, they would have lost even more stores (many stores closed during this time) and eventually would have closed, and teens still would have lost a gathering place. Same result, but much more detrimental to the community.

          I’m not saying that is what would happen everywhere, but that is what would have happened here.

          In the meantime, I’d still like to see an alternate solution. Anyone have one?

          1. >> Groups of teens have been causing real, actual problems.

            The supporters of this mall’s policy seem to have a difficult time with the concepts of some, most, and all.

          2. You’re right, we do have problems with that. We obviously don’t know how to tell which teenagers are going cause problems before they actually cause problems. Care to educate us on how to do that? Thanks! :)

          3. >> You’re right, we do have problems with that.

            Who is “we?”

            Are you affiliated with the mall? I don’t expect you to provide a title or name. I respect your desire for anonymity since I myself am posting anonymously as well. But can you give us a general idea of where your interests lie? If by we, you mean “we non-teenagers,” then I don’t think that’s reasonable categorization since I am a non-teen and you and I appear to have different views.

            As to your question — how do we identify teens who are trouble makers — you can’t.

            You simply cannot. We don’t live in a world where we can pre-screen or assume criminality. A lot of people take a lazy and frankly racist or discriminatory approach by using skin color, clothing, age, gender, or any number of other short hand signifiers as evidence of delinquency.

            Ask yourself this question: how can we know who the adult criminals are? Care to educate us on that point? A central tenet of our society (though often and most recently under assault for various reasons) is the quaint notion of innocent before proven guilty.

            You can’t arrest people for crimes they have not committed. Nor can you dismiss an entire group for the crimes of a few. The only reason this is being done to teens is because they have a lesser standing as humans in our society. They simply don’t have many rights and so can be searched at school, excluded from places, or discriminated against based on the actions of a few and the biases of many.

          4. I actually don’t care about anonymity, I’ve just had trouble registering for an account here, and have given up trying. For now.

            Anyway, I’m also #184, which explains that, while I no longer work for a mall, I did work for a mall that implemented a similar policy.

            You said: As to your question — how do we identify teens who are trouble makers — you can’t.

            We can’t identify the troublemakers, so we really can’t selectively bar them from entry. Restricting entry at certain times is the only solution that I can see.

            Once again, I’d like to point out that we aren’t legally allowed to treat these children as adults, and kick them out when they misbehave. If we could, we would just wait until they did, and kick them out, without having to spend money on security guards to ID these people at the entries.

            That would be great for the teens that aren’t there to screw with other people, and for the mall patrons and employees, but we’re not allowed to do it. Also, unaccompanied children are also restricted on airplanes and in public pools. Is that discrimination as well?

            You said: Teens in most cases have not successfully learned to transition without question to the indoctrination and pathetic compliance of their elders. They have not learned to be confined to their compound or the quiet desperation and sham of the American Dream. They have not learned to sequester themselves indoors with a dog or cat or television or laptop or book. They want to meet other people and laugh. Imagine that. The hooligans.

            Hey, that’s eloquent and all, but what does it have to do with the mall? Also, in regards to my previous post, I call bullshit on this repeat statement that the teens that prompt these policies are just behaving how they always have. That was not the case in my mall, and I’m willing to bet that it’s not the case in other malls where this has been implemented.

            You said: People intentionally and disingenuously use incendiary, but ambivalent colloquialisms like “rowdy” and “hooligan” because they want to be able to dodge their implications if called on it.

            I didn’t. I said that the new behavior was hostile and disruptive. Kids would suddenly running screaming down the walkways, sometimes running into other patrons or racks of clothes, and there were frequent uses of the benches, planters, and other furniture for jumping and other acrobatics. Also, lots of car and plant vandalism. All of that is in #184, which you haven’t responded to.

            On several notable occasions, groups of teens descended on the toddler area, jumped around, on, and over the children’s soft play equipment, scaring the hell out of the toddlers and their parents, and causing most of them to leave. Not to mention that whole ‘imminent danger to babies’ thing. (See a photo of the play area here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/roseandchad/4875292766/)

            Situations like this prompted the policy in our mall, not any ‘Fear The Teens’ BS.

            This is not normal teen behavior. Saying that this is a normal teen thing is an insult to other teens.

            I’d also like to point out that a better solution has repeatedly been called for, and no one has even tried to supply one. Do you have one or what? I’d love to read one, and to be able to discuss it.

          5. My response to your entire post is simply this… where is the mall’s security?

            You’re seriously telling me that the mall’s security is powerless to intervene, can only stand idly by while middle schoolers terrorize toddlers and push elderly people down stairs?

            Come on.

            Here’s the real story… I’m willing to wager that the mall has a barebones or largely invisible security staff. I’m willing to bet if they’re like most rent-a-cops, they spend most of their time hiding out in secret locations which allow extended smoke breaks and furtive PSP playing or cellphone texting in an isolated corner of the parking garage.

            Your problem is the mall is cheap and the staff incompetent. I do not believe for one second that the security staff is powerless. I think they’re absent. And they’re leaving the staff of the stores to do their job for them. Your beef is with the mall and its choice to understaff and save a buck.

            Some will say “it’s not the mall’s responsibility to watch these kids.” Fine. Don’t watch them. And don’t watch adults either. In fact, don’t watch anyone. But then don’t complain when having eliminated any oversight, SOME (different from ALL) people misbehave. Also, don’t put people on the registers. Accept payment via the honors system. And don’t lock the doors at night.

            Locks cost money.

            So do doors.

            If a business intends to account for normal human behavior, they have to spend some money to hire actual humans to shepherd the process through without mayhem.

            This is the same thing as class size issues at schools. We give a teacher fifty students, then berate the teacher because she can’t “control” her students.

            If the mall won’t pay for a competent, honest, and well-staffed security detail, they should not be in business.

            Incidentally, I predict this policy goes away by Christmas. The geniuses who implemented this are going to see that, especially in this near-depression, they cannot antagonize and exclude customers, even the youngest whose behavior, clothing, and “gang signs” they find so objectionable.

          6. You said: I’m willing to wager that the mall has a barebones or largely invisible security staff.

            Yes, because teenagers can never, ever be responsible for themselves.

            As I previously stated, we upped the security twice before implementing this solution. We spent alot of money trying to avoid this, as a matter of fact. We now have enough security to have at least one person in each wing on the mall, and one officer at every entrance on weekends. It’s alot of security.

            You said: If a business intends to account for normal human behavior, they have to spend some money to hire actual humans to shepherd the process through without mayhem.

            Right, so the hostile, disruptive behavior that I outlined is normal? Wow. No wonder you think adults hate teens out of hand. Here’s some information: Adults don’t hate teens. Adults hate teens who act ‘normal’ like you. Also, adults who act ‘normal’ like you, and if the elderly could get up to those kinds of shenanigans, they’d hate them as well.

            You said: If the mall won’t pay for a competent, honest, and well-staffed security detail, they should not be in business.

            Over half of our weekend security guards were moonlighting sheriff’s deputies, so I’d hesitate before called them incompetent and dishonest. Regardless, there’s not much they can do to kids. They can call them over and make them sit in the office for awhile, if they cooperate. Legally, touching children is assault.

            But that’s okay. Feel free to ignore the facts if it makes you feel better.

            You said: Incidentally, I predict this policy goes away by Christmas.

            This policy has been in place for three years at my local mall. Still going strong.

            Also, I polled my nephew and his friends. They don’t care about this policy. They say that the mall is ‘nicer’ and ‘better’ since it’s been implemented. That’s only a small cross-section of local teens, but I found it interesting that they felt that way.

  8. Hmm, time to organize a large group of highschool students to hurry up and get there before the 4:00 deadline and hang out. Should they raise holy hell, or just hold signs? Hmm.

    Also, they don’t say how many teens one adult can “escort.” I’d love to show up with 400 kids and tell them “OK, go!”

    Fly and be free.

    1. Yeah! Thats the best answer yet! Show up with about 25 kids in tow and each one flashing a $50 bill in the mall security guy’s face! OK EVERYBODY! LETS GO & HAVE FUN!! LMAO!
      I can just see the iphone video now!

      Hard Tymes At Gmail

  10. Mayfair Mall in suburban Milwaukee has had this for years, and the number of police calls has dropped dramatically. We had some real issues with fights breaking out, particularly around the cinema for some reason.

  11. Oooooh! Kids!!!!!!

    Seriously, how could “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” ever happen in a world like this?

  12. It is private property. The mall gets to make these decisions and it will reap the benefits or negative consequences of those decisions….where is the problem?

    1. Oh, yeah, they do. But we’re also allowed to be part of seeing to it that they have negative consequences.

  13. Dumb policy. And to those saying parents drop them off like it’s daycare: NO! the kids want to hang out there.
    I hope sales drop. The last thing we need is a move towards a more closed society that over protects children and turns them into morons who come up with stupid policies like this one.

    1. “That’s what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age.”

  15. The Christiana Mall in Delaware started a strict curfew policy after a bunch of kids started a food fight in the food court and apparently caused some damage. Also, the Coventry Mall in Pottstown, Pennsylvania started a curfew policy in April, although I haven’t seen it actually enforced.
    As somebody that spent most of their teenage years in various malls, I can somewhat understand why malls have started these rules. When I was 14 all I did was loiter at the mall, buy fast food, and play the occasional arcade game (remember when arcades existed?) However, I’m pretty sure both of the malls I mentioned allow anybody 16 and older, rather than the 18 and older policy this mall in Cincinnati enforces. The former makes more sense to me. If you’re under 16 you can’t drive yourself to the mall and you probably don’t have a job. But once you have a driver’s license, I don’t see why you shouldn’t be allowed at a mall by yourself.

    1. yeah I was a total metal mall rat at christiana mall back in the 80’s.. that’s where we all figured out who was throwin the party and who still had their license or car still worked or who was breakin up and hookin up… i guess everyone can just hang out on facebook now and online shop..another great american pasttime dead

  17. All of the malls here in Huntsville, AL have had this policy for several years as well. While the malls have every right to do what they want, and although protest boycotts do not work, our family (with two teenagers) just stopped ever going to the mall. The “punish the 99.9% for the actions of the %0.1 (or less)” philosophy sucks. Throw out or arrest the troublemakers and leave everyone else alone.

  18. The thing is, this policy doesn’t really deal with the actual problem, which is that suburban kids have no real place to hang out. And yes, I recognize that it’s not the mall’s responsibility to be that “third” place that isn’t school or home.

    1. The problem of no third place to go is a symptom of a larger problem in America. As a country we don’t seem to deal with reality very well. The gradual transition from youth to adulthood is too abrupt and gone from most kids lives today. We coddle the kids too much and as soon as they mess up bad we treat them like adults.

      We disaffect the youth and with the war on drugs we have the largest prison population. We don’t rehabilitate criminals very well either so maybe we just aren’t good at preparing people for society in general.

      School isn’t very relevant to most kid’s lives and it is too rigid. Tech school should be just as acceptable as college prep classes. I know cable installers making more money than some people with degrees.

      Most high schools aren’t designed to really prepare kids to face the world and this misguided test driven approach has shoved aside music, art and sports which really help give meaning to life especially to teenagers. Teaching teens mostly how to regurgitate information and react to bells appropriately doesn’t give them the skills they need to cope with life. Especially life in a fast changing society.

      As a country we just don’t deal well with complex subjects anymore.

    2. There’s a mall across the street in both directions. Plenty of places for teenagers to waste time in tri-county.

    3. Bull! There is a community center 1/2 mile away, a teen club 1 mile away, laser tag, parks, fields, etc.

  20. This is not a constructive solution.

    How about having areas in the mall dedicated to a specific age groups?
    You could have an area in the mall for seniors, with stores they like, and you could have an area for teenagers, catering to their preferences.
    You don’t want to treat people like they’re a problem.
    You want them to feel appreciated.
    So that when they’ve grown up and they start making some serious dough, they’ll drive past the mall and have happy memories, and think: “Hey, let’s stop there, because I like it there!”.

  21. This policy is popping up all over, and reclaiming malls for people who want to shop, instead of being a daycare for the children of lazy, neglectful parents.

    It’s a GOOD policy.

  22. It might be private property, but the government still gives malls huge amounts of free infrastructure and tax breaks etc. Places like malls really are de facto public property when you consider the stake that everyone has in them just as tax payers.

    As someone who just passed out of that age group, this bothers me on so many levels, and I’ve ranted on here about similar stories. The fact is that society is continually taking away privileges and responsibilities from children and adolescents in a misguided attempt to protect them, fulfill hierarchical motivations by undermining them (a lot of adults take away rights from kids because they want to enforce their will upon a group that is just too easy to discriminate against) or adhere to the “seen but not heard” philosophy.

    So what we have now is a generation that is completely inept, sheltered and driven by boredom. They created an environment that is so sterile and insultingly mundane that kids have to be medicated. Then, when someone steps out of line, everyone scrambles to point fingers, institute more expansive rules and generally make our lives less enjoyable without ever doing any research into potential outcomes or exploring more progressive/less invasive options. I would venture to say that the mall culture itself is an outgrowth of the utter meaningless of living at the age of 16. You have nothing to do, nowhere to be and the future is at its most intangible. What else to do but fuck around in a temple of consumerism?

    I don’t know that i can necessarily speak for the entire 13-18 year old demographic, but we’re not animals. Fuck agism.

    1. spot on, max. This kind of policy stinks. If you treat people as potential troublemakers, you stir resentment and create even more troublemakers. Everybody who could as much as dream of supporting such a policy (and I say that as someone who left this demographic about 27 years ago) should go fuck themselves and hopefully end up being annoyed by giant crowds of teenagers in the street, now they can’t even hang out in the mall any more :-)

    2. Wonderfully put. Children today have nothing to DO. They have no purpose in society and that leads to problems. Children and teens need to feel valued and useful just like everyone else.

  23. This is such a terribly confusing policy I’m not quite sure what to say.
    Not to mention it’s ageist beyond belief.

    Also ruins a helluvalotta dates for poor 15 to 17 year olds… sometimes, the mall was the only place my parents would let me go.
    Poor kids.

  24. “The thing is, this policy doesn’t really deal with the actual problem, which is that suburban kids have no real place to hang out.”

    Church, Homes, Youth Centers…I had no problem avoiding the mall for most of my teen years. Also, are you going to condemn convenience stores next?

  25. This isn’t new, they started this sometime…. last year, at Bayshore Mall near Milwaukee, WI. I was 17 at the time, and they ID’d me while I was walking around the mall. I turned around, got some coffee, and hung out at the Apple Store. Really obnoxious, since I had to reschedule my dinner plans. :P

  26. the funny thing about this particular mall is that it’s about 10 minutes (tops) away from another mall that’s practically vacant and much easier and more fun to cause actual trouble in. if i was still 16 and wanting to stir up some shit, i’d go there instead.

    tri-county mall also seems to be doing less than great, and has been for quite some time. it seems ill-advised to kick out any potential customers, even if they do just buy themselves a meal and hang out. besides, if they DO get loud and obnoxious it’s always possible to kick out the troublemakers. sometimes teens get rowdy on the principal of “it’s not like they’re going to kick us out.”

    remove the individuals causing problems and leave the rest alone. if the adults at the mall are still complaining about those damn teenagers after that, then shame on them.

  28. I wonder how this will affect these young peoples experience of the mall. Will this mean that they connect this mall (or even malls in general) with negative feelings?

    And how will that affect the profitability of these companies in the long run.

    I know that companies spend fortunes trying to create a positive brand experience, and while this is aimed at providing a positive experience for a certain group (older people) it ignores the fact that tomorrow’s shoppers are young people now.

    As I wasn’t one of the kids hanging out at the mall/corner store (my time was spent in badly ventilated basement rooms playing AD&D 2nd ed.) I can’t speak for that group, but I would have been mighty pissed at this kind of attitude and would probably have continued shunning the mall for years afterwards. If I am persona non grata (especially if it’s due to company policy reasons or individual worker reasons. Public health reasons are easier to live with such as liquor store limits) somewhere that feeling doesn’t just evaporate due to me hitting some magic age number.

    1. Ageism?? Really? Kids can’t go to most public pools alone, either, is that ageism as well?

      These policies were put into place for a variety of reasons, including legal reasons. Ageism isn’t one of them.

      Here’s one example: Two teenagers are fighting one another, which is a common occurrence. What can the adult security guard do? Very little. If he touches either of the kids without permission, he can be sued. If he doesn’t stop the fight, he can be sued. I can think of three more without trying.

      Unattended children are just bad news, legally.

  30. No blacks = Discrimination!!!

    No women = Discrimination!!!!!!

    No gays = Discrimination!!!1!!1!!!!

    No youth = Meh, most teenagers are little shits anyways.

    Yeah, okay.

    @Max (#20): Well said. I am 30 now but remember how ghettoized teenagehood already was back when I was 15. It’s a time when one can feel incredibly powerless, idle and meaningless, when no longer coddled and adored as a child but not yet engaged as an individual. It really can be a total vacuum and limbo.

    I can’t see how sweeping and patronizing discrimination helps young people, or the rest of society, in any way.

    1. “No blacks = Discrimination!!!
      No women = Discrimination!!!!!!
      No gays = Discrimination!!!1!!1!!!!
      No youth = Meh, most teenagers are little shits anyways.

      Yeah, okay.”

      Being too young is not a protected status and thus restrictions based on it cannot legally be discrimination. Being too old is protected as are race/sex/orientation as you list above.

      1. Oh, I wasn’t commenting on the legalities of it all, merely on the attitude that below a certain age, sweeping discrimination based on stereotypes alone (not based on individual behaviour and safety) is widely accepted as fair game.

        Another commentor already pointed out that kids (young AND not so young) are pretty much the only group left whom we can freely denigrate. But why? Just because some parents are doing a poor job of keeping tabs on their own kid? Why should that affect all the good kid’s standing in society? ‘Innocent until proven guilty’ shouldn’t only apply beyond 19 years old. Blind discrimination isn’t a very stellar example of guidance.

        Even dogs and chimps recognize unfair treatment and injustice. Yet we expect our youth to swallow unwarranted mistrust and prejudice towards them. That’s plain hypocrisy. It’s dishonest and lazy and I’d be embarassed to try and explain- much less justify- such a ruling to my own kid.

        We’re not going to turn our youth into violent, out-of-control, rampaging gangs of thugs by upholding the same basic fairness and respect towards them than for every other group. Poor parenting, bad socio-economic situation and abuse do that.

        1. “Oh, I wasn’t commenting on the legalities of it all, merely on the attitude that below a certain age, sweeping discrimination based on stereotypes alone (not based on individual behaviour and safety) is widely accepted as fair game.”
          I guess I don’t see the problem. Sweeping generalizations are the basis of an awful lot of rules and laws crossing all sorts of activity/groups/whatever.

          At 3am with no cars within a 1 mile radius is it really any big deal that you run a red light? Not really. It’s still illegal. You base the rules on general cases or you base them around catching the few “bad folk” at the cost of inconvenience to the rest.

      2. “Being too young is not a protected status and thus restrictions based on it cannot legally be discrimination. Being too old is protected as are race/sex/orientation as you list above.”

        Are you actually serious.

        Transpeople are rarely if ever covered in anti-discrimination policies. If someone tried to claim we therefore were not discriminated against, I can’t guarantee I’d stay civil.

        “Not illegal” is not the same as “okay”.

        1. But you see the difference with “discriminating against” children, right? Does it make sense for an infant to have all the rights, privileges, and responsibilities of an adult? Of course not. An infant can’t freely wander the streets, and if one was discovered it would be put in protective custody. In our society, we don’t consider people to be adults until age 18. Perhaps that is too old, but we do have to draw the line (or series of lines) somewhere.

  31. There is a lot to be said for ageism. Kids are stupid- unfortunately a large number of adults are too, but we can’t set the age limit at malls to 35 or they’d have no customers.

  32. I think (apart from all other objections I have) that it’s just a bad long-term business decision.

    Also, the problem of not all teenagers being little shits, and many having legitimate reasons for going there.
    I fully understand the problems, as a young man I worked security in shopping centers and companies, but this negative in almost all ways, IMO.

  33. crappy suburbs with no town centers, no town squares, the only place to congregate is shitty (private property) malls where individual rights do not exist. A few years ago, a man was kicked out of the “crossgates mall” in upstate shit new york for wearing an anti-war teeshirt.

  34. I came of age at Tri-County mall in the 70s. I used to ride my bike 10 hard miles to get there. It was one of the few places where I successfully asked girls out. When my brother worked there we also used to get high in his store’s small stock room and then head over to the music shop and annoy the staff by playing guitars ‘n such, then cruise the mall for pretty girls. I’m real glad I didn’t grow up with all this anti-young people bigotry bullshit.
    Free range kids! Free range teens! (with good role models!)

  35. So, before I make my Saturday night plans, let me ask this: If you do not already have an adult escort when you arrive at the mall, will an adult escort be provided for you? If so, I think I just realized I have some urgent shopping to do tonight.

  36. Ummm, weren’t malls made for tweeners and young adults? I very quickly lost intrest in and “need” for malls after middle school.

    As for responsibility… think of the generation making life and death command decisions during WWII (enlisted and homefront) who then took similar positions of responsibility in the corporate world, all under or around the age of 18.

    I think of myself as a mature person, but diddn’t get my shit together until age 27. That’s about 10 years too late.

    If we want the world to be a better place we need to let our childern grow up and learn how to make decisions and learn from their mistakes. Without that get have the world we have now run by a bunch of dimwitted adults acting like childern.

    PS: CAPTCHAs are getting too hard, does that mean I’m too old?

  37. And then the malls will find out all too late that those kids are the only ones patronizing their mall in the afternoons and weekends. And parents won’t want to eat their own afternoons and weekends so their kids can socialize just because the mall has a stupid draconian policy.

    If you’re the Mall of America — which is less a mall and more a national tourist attraction — perhaps you can pull this off. Woe to the small-time malls who decide this might be a good idea and then wonder why they’re hemorrhaging stores.

  38. They’ve implemented this at the Chapel Hill Mall in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. It’s not the mall’s responsibility to be parents to these kids, and quite honestly when they’re being loud and obnoxious the mall loses business. If they need a place to hang, there needs to be more open space in the city.

    I just wish they’d implement something like this at Borders or Barnes & Noble. Sure, talk, even laugh because it’s not a library, but there’s no reason to be loud and to cause problems just for the sake of it. Kids can be kids without being little shits. Honestly, though, the same goes for 20somethings. They can be just as annoying as rambunctious teens.

  40. And what exactly is going to stop the “escort” from just going to the movies or a bookstore or even leaving entirely after the “little shit” is in the door. Are they taking names and pictures and building a database? Are these wristbands more like handcuffs? The devil is in the details here. And furthermore, if I lived around there and needed to make some money couldn’t I just hang out outside and offer to whore myself out as an escort. Hell given the questions I raised above I could do this several times at five to ten bucks a head and make a pretty good bit of cash. Nobody really seems to think ahead with these policies.

  41. I can understand 14 and under or even 16 but 18 is ridiculous. Aren’t there 16 year olds that work at the mall?

  42. one of our malls up here in central new york, i think carousel mall, has that policy as well or one pretty close to it

  43. I think this is bad policy in general but my question is does the +21 requirement actually mean that a 19 or 20 year old mother couldn’t bring in her own baby or toddler or is there a specific exception for that.

    Or someone who gets emancipated at 17 and is living on their own.

    Or a 19 or 20 year old with custody of a younger sibling.

    A 20 year old really should be able to take their younger sibling back to school shopping anyway, even if their folks are still alive.

    When I was 16-18 my dates tended to involved the mall and the near-by coffee shop. We were quiet. We didn’t buy much but we always bought food and occasionally books or CD’s (back when they actually did have book and music stores in the mall.) We’d have gone to the movies there too if that theater hadn’t closed. Parents going on kids movie dates with them is just not going to work. And kids should not have to wait until college to date.

    1. P.S.

      It’s not that one or two malls doing it is really a real problem.

      However if it becomes a major trend for malls, coffee shops, and theaters (all places where I’ve seen it done) it will end up being a big problem.

      Even worse if it gets extended to museums or zoos etc.

  44. Back when I worked in a huge shopping mall in the early 90s, we had annual meetings of “meet the owners” that you could attend if you were a store manager. They had it at one of the movie theaters, and I remember the panel of the Board of Directors that owned the properties. Good ol’ white suthun’ boys. Old guys, mostly. Completely rich and out of touch; they closed off one parking lot so they could land their helicopters there.

    Our mall had started a policy that said that, upon request, you had to prove to the mall cops you had purchased something (via a receipt) with the last hour to be allowed to stay, otherwise you were accused of “loitering” and asked to leave.

    During the Q&A session, this was brought up. First of all, back then some stores did not have cash registers that had time stamps; only date stamps. Second, this didn’t really work because some people were buying, say one candy bar an hour to get a receipt. And lastly, it was pretty obvious that the mall cops were really only targeting one demographic: dark-skinned people, usually youths. This sometimes caused problems if they were employees and went to the food court on their lunch break. More than once, I had lost an employee would had to sneak back in via unguarded delivery exits to return on their break. It was sloppy, unfair, and just making people angry. When this was brought up at the meeting, some of the board made some harrumphing non-committal statements, as expected.

    But not one guy. This old man stood up, and started shouting.

    “You people are stupid. WE DON’T EVEN HAVE TO LET THEIR KIND IN HERE!” The rest of the board tried to hush him up, but it wasn’t working. “This is PRIVATE PROPERTY, not a public park, and WE CAN CHOOSE TO ALLOW OR DENY ACCESS TO ANYONE WE DAMN WELL PLEASE. The only reason Negroes are given the privilege is if they behave themselves and buy from our merchants! We don’t want them loitering around, causing trouble, and you people are making it difficult for higher spenders to stick around!”

    Yes, this was 1991. Not 1955.

    When some of the black managers started to protest, he told them to shut up and they were just “sticking up for their type.” When white managers started to boo him, he said he owned the place and he could evict every single one of them if they wanted to “March on DC” about it. “See, this PROVES colored people are trouble makers!”

    Yeah… that went badly. That Mall has had some serious problems financially for years, and I don’t think it was related to “that element” as they think it was.

  45. It’s unfortunate that a small number of bad actors can ruin it for all.

    Many years ago, I worked as an assistant manager at a grocery store along a section of highway in the city known for “cruising”. Kids would park in the lot and socialize. We had a big lot and too few customers to begin with, and so we wouldn’t necessarily have objected to the re-purposing of our lot in that manner. On the other hand, there was vandalism and trash, requiring us to send someone out for at least an hour on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Unfortunately, the police were already very busy trying to cope with the overall situation.

    Anyways, one Friday evening, one of our semi drivers walks in the front door and says he can’t get to the loading dock with our grocery load because some kids are parked out back and refuse to move. This is a really bad situation for the driver: due to the design of the building, he is pulling off a major street into a narrow alley with a hill… it’s pretty much impossible to back up, and they’re blocking forward movement.

    One of the assistant managers goes out with the driver and tries to get the kids to move. They’re belligerent and refuse. So she says to the truck driver, in a loud voice, “Cars? I don’t see any cars in the way. Pull in.” The driver shrugs, gets back in, and starts rolling down the hill towards the cars. Predictably, the kids jump in their cars and flee the insane grocery store people.

    Thing is, many of the kids aren’t a problem. It’s too damn bad that some small percentage cause problems for everyone else.

  46. The Galleria Mall in Buffalo, Ny has been doing that for years. They also limit groups of more than 10 (I believe) due to groups of teens loitering. They rarely buy anything…

  47. We didn’t have a mall when I was a kid. Or, rather, there was a small one and a dead one in Hadley, MA (western mass folks know what I mean) that were too depressing, and a big one in Holyoke that was a pain to get to. But even when we DID go (no shopping options in our town, but the mall had a skate shop), the other teens from Springfield/Holyoke/Chicopee/etc were a pain in the ass – loud, starting fights, generally making a sort of Clockwork Orange scene.
    And even if we DID have a mall, my friends & I were loud & annoying too. We still are. I don’t understand why a private concern like a mall CAN’T say “Hey, no kids”. If they want to cut off their income, fine. Who’s to say the loss of income isn;t balanced by the loss of shrinkage?

    1. I’m from Western Mass too, the Holyoke Mall imposed the age restriction a few years ago after, what I believe was a lot of property damage.

      I worked at the Berkshire Mall for a while, after moving up here for college, and the shock of all these tweenagers making a general mess of the place, not buying anything anywhere and being a general nuisance to paying customers and making a huge mess and destroying property in FYE one night was quite poignant. But here, there is no place to go; if you can get to hadley, you can hop on the very well run PVTA shuttle to downtown amherst or northampton, even greenfield. where there is plenty to do.

  48. My family and I drive down to the Walden Galleria at least once a month (from Toronto), and we’ve seen this kind of policy enforced at that mall too.

    I don’t think any Canadian mall this kind of policy.

  49. That’s just ridiculous. In my town, implementing something like this would really cut mall profits. And why should the rest of us be punished for a few idiots? I can understand that other shoppers (myself included) get annoyed by loud kids, but that just means malls need to get tougher about throwing people out.

  50. I would recommend no one can get in the “mall” without a proper credit check and review of bank account balance.

  51. the best side effect is that it might get kids to do something imaginative, interesting or original with their time instead of just be consumers. malls are horrible temples to false slack that enshrine mindless consumption and deter thought, reflection or originality. this mall may be doing kids an inadvertant favor…

  52. First, teenagers should get together and refuse to work in the mall. If they can’t shop there, why should they work there.

    Second, if loud groups of youngsters are a problem, ask those problem groups to leave. This is serious laziness on the part of mall security/management which results in unfair treatment of well-behaved youngsters.

    Third, wtf are teens supposed to do with their spare time? This kind of thing rubs me the wrong way. It’s like every year when people complain about teenagers trick-or-treating on Halloween. They aren’t allowed to go to clubs. They can’t go to the mall, apparently. What exactly are they supposed to be doing? Are we supposed to lock them in the basement on their 13th birthday and then let them out to go to college?

    1. They should be utilizing community centers, imo. That’s what they’re for.

      And if your community doesn’t have community centers, then you and everyone else in your community that sees this issue should get on that.

      Let’s be clear: Malls cannot throw out trouble-making children. They can be held liable if that child is hurt after they leave the mall. And can you imagine what would happen when the parent comes to pick up their child??? Not good. In fact, that ‘solution’ is worse than just barring them entry.

      In some malls, there are so many of them that real customers, and security, can’t even get through the crowd to the stores. If sales aren’t matching those numbers, then all of those people are making trouble by bothering paying customers. How do you throw out an entire crowd of children without causing a riot?

      So what are malls supposed to do? They’re not there for the sake of the children. They’re there to make money, and when your paying customers are afraid to come to the mall because of the kids, and your stores are suffering because they don’t have paying customers, you have to get rid of the problem.

      In many cases, the problem is the kids. It sucks for them, and I understand that (I’m 24 years old, so I’m not too far removed from teenhood myself.) but that’s the way it is.

      Teen energy should be moved from protesting the mall into protesting the local community’s lack of options for them.

      1. You mean all those community centers that were closed because local governments can’t afford them any more?

  53. No kids on Main Street! I’m so tired of parents using public space as a “daycare”. The only place children should be allowed to be alone is in their rooms where they can be safely monitored by the webcam on their school-issued laptop.

  54. actually I’m really surprised – I’d always assumed escorts wouldn’t be allowed in Ohio.

  55. I remember roaming free in the mall as a teen.

    I also remember all the trouble we caused. :3

    I can understand a mall wanting to do this.

    When I was a young teen, I used to get upset at adults constantly hassling us all the time. But, the truth is, it was usually because we were doing something bad. That time of life is, for most kids, a time to act out and behave your worst.

    We weren’t allowed anywhere at all, really. If we hung out at a park for more then a couple hours the police would come by sooner or later.

    So, where can you put the people who are in the time of their lives where they are behaving the worst? A padded room? Meh, too much effort. The current way (shuffling them around from place to place as if they were homeless people) seems to semi-work. It’s not a perfect solution, but whatever.

  58. Being too old is protected as are race/sex/orientation as you list above.

    I seem to recall that the Supremes ruled a few years ago that you could refuse to hire or you could fire someone for being old.

    1. I seem to recall that the Supremes ruled a few years ago that you could refuse to hire or you could fire someone for being old.

      That’s why I only listen to the Court of Vandellas.

  59. This policy started in St. Louis a few years ago. I got carded at the mall a few months later… when I was already old enough to be someone’s chaperone. Grr.

  61. Something that will also “detract from a comfortable shopping atmosphere”: gestapo-like authoritarian policies. Unless they’re going to let me carry a beer around the mall while I shop, there’s no way in hell I would submit to being carded to browse the GAP…

    -RTM

  62. If these policies lead to the death and demolition of mall culture, that would be a plus. Teenagers could get back to normal, wholesome activities like furtive sex behind the chicken coop.

  63. As a teen I hung out at the mall after school almost every day. To be honest I can’t remember ever buying a single thing.

    Malls are not hang outs they are places of business. I have no issues with Malls banning teenagers.

  64. Personally, I drop off my 8 month old daughter at the mall every morning and pick her up on the way home from work. A discriminatory policy like this would force her to crawl the streets instead.

  66. What about the predominantly older crowd I hear about that uses the mall as a climate conditioned exercise track? I bet thrifty old Bettys on fixed incomes don’t spend much either.

  68. I managed a videogame store in a Phoenix mall for several years. Our problem wasn’t with teenagers, it was with elementary school aged kids cutting class and entertaining themselves by tearing up the store.

    I caught at least two shoplifters a week, and the average age was 8. Average attempted take was $200 retail, just so you know I wasn’t nailing kids for pocketing candy bars.

    On the weekends, some parents would dump little kids off with their school books and expect them to lay on the floor and study -and to be there 9 hours later, or else they’d threaten to sue the store no matter how much we insisted that we couldn’t be responsible for them. I would call the police, and they’d be reported to CPS, but it kept happening.

    When the mall instituted a policy of not allowing anyone under age 16 without an escort we were able to spend more time helping customers, had a lot less paperwork, and sales improved. The overall atmosphere shifted from a daycare center to a real business.

  70. #68 >Teen energy should be moved from protesting the mall into protesting the local community’s lack of options for them.< In a world where the poorest American teens live like princes and princesses when compared to their peers in most of the world, and have, if they apply themselves, greater options and a brighter future than almost any young person in the world, I have no patience for the idea that the community should provide even more options for them. In the U.S., young people should be taught the personal discipline necessary to realize the benefits available to them and to exert themselves in school. Secondary school students in China spend from 0630 to 2130 six days a week in supervised school activities and enjoy half a day free of classwork a week. Tell those students that American young people need more 'options.'

    1. Oh, yes, the classic “if they aren’t fearing for their lives, then they don’t deserve any sympathy” card. Go to hell. The existence of “worse” does not make “bad” good. Lack of proper opportunity for a good life outside of developed countries does not mitigate problems in developed countries-contrary to that line of thinking, that there are miserable people out there does not make any developed country’s citizens life better(excluding government policies that actively make other nations worse off, but that;s a different discussion). Do american teens have it better than african teens? Yes, but that’s not the issue here.It’s the loss of trust of childhood before gaining the rights of adulthood that mark the american teen years. According to your logic, american women shouldn’t complain about their career prospects being limited because they can actually have careers, unlike women in third world counties.(sarcasm) Those spoiled american women, wanting things to be fair, how dare they, they should just accept their lot in life(/sarcasm).

  71. Seems pretty pointless really. You want teens to be less destructive and disruptive. So rather than let them be indoors in a well-lit, security manned and camera observed environment with repercussions for misbehaviour, you want them out on the street, unobserved and without any supervision?

    Mind you, me and my friends never did anything like throw house destroying parties or crash Daddy’s Merc. If we wanted to drink, we did the sensible thing and asked our parents if we could. If we wanted some friends round, we mentioned who would be coming and turned away the other ignorant pricks who turned up to try and trash the place if word got out. We worked for our leisure cash and there wasn’t any hope of whining Mom and Pop into paying out if we came up short at the end of the month.

  72. My local mall does this, and it’s faaaaantastic. Though, I would be pissed as teen, as I did spend a lot of time in the mall.

  73. I fail to see the fascination with hanging out at the mall. Pretty sad life if that’s what you do with it.

    And don’t tell me there’s nothing to do. Start a band, take a class, join a club. Get a hobby. Do a sport. Get a job (I’m sure the mall will make exceptions for employees).

    I grew up on a farm; there was no mall. You have no right to be entertained 24/7.

    1. Norman: Show me the money to buy the instruments, materials and supplies, and pay the registration fees for said bands, hobbies and clubs/classes.

      Also, fuck dude, would you want to work at the mall where you were liable to get kicked out unless you agreed to be a wage slave?

  74. Speaking as the teenager I once was – this is such bullshit. Back in the 1980’s the Hudson Valley Mall (aka where I spent far too much time blowing money in the arcade) was mostly run by people who were 18 and under. If you can drive a car then you should be able to go into the mall you drive it to, especially if you work there.

    There are better things to do with your life than hang out in malls (like make explosives, snort white out, have BB Gun fights, and set things on fire – still talking as a teenager here), but this seems to me like just another step in the great wussification of the nation. If you fear “the nanny state” then stop raising your kids to be people who can’t operate without one.

    It’s hard to imagine that we once had enough trust in people to let 18 year olds drink.

  75. My local mall tried that about five years ago. The incidents of shoplifting went down, so they kept it. Is it throwing the baby out with the bathwater? *shrugs* Can’t tell by my mall. It’s expanded every year for the last 3. And it’s not like our population is growing (actually, it’s shrinking).

    “What about the predominantly older crowd I hear about that uses the mall as a climate conditioned exercise track? I bet thrifty old Bettys on fixed incomes don’t spend much either.”

    They also don’t scare away business. Is it fair that large groups of teenagers scare away other business even when they’re not doing anything but loitering and that malls punish teenagers to try and get that other demographic back in? Not particularly, but as long as it works (for a given degree of work) it’s not really going to change. Because I really don’t think there are enough other people who care about it as a problem to force the issue.

    “And then the malls will find out all too late that those kids are the only ones patronizing their mall in the afternoons and weekends”

    Well, no, in my experience those people who work 9-5 jobs tend to go to the malls on the weekends, which is why the policy is effect for the malls’ busiest times (Friday and Saturday night).

    There are malls that are trying to make themselves more of public then semi-public places with services that encourage hanging out (like libraries and government functions and actitivties such as skating and gyms and laser tag and whatever). But at the end of the day there’s still mostly private entities trying to make money and their policies are going to reflect that.

  76. Where did this notion that shopping malls are public or “semi-public” places come from? They always have been and always will be private property. If they’re tired of being foiled by meddling teenagers, that’s their prerogative to turn them away.

    1. If they’re tired of being foiled by meddling teenagers, that’s their prerogative to turn them away.

      You mean just like it’s their prerogative to turn customers away based on sex, race and national origin?

      1. Amazing how the little things get people all riled up.

        The mall near me in NC recently started doing this and I love it. I can go on a Friday night and not have to worry about the crowds of teens creating noise and disruptions. So far most of the businesses I’ve dealt with have liked it as well.

        Even as a teen (I’m 31 now.) I didn’t like those group of other teens. I didn’t find the mall “cool”. I went there because I needed something. So in my teenage world that other 99% of my fellow peers ruined it for me. (Or it would be ruined now if I was still a teen.) If you are an adult I don’t see what’s to bitch about. Unless you are going to argue over the semantics of discrimination….which this probably is, and is probably justified.

        And I don’t need to hear about kids have no options. Hell growing up in the 80’s and 90’s I had a few options. Go over to my friends house, play the Nintendo, watch TV, tinker on something…that was about the extent of my life in high school. And things today look to me very much like they did 30 years ago, so I don’t need any of that “what should they be doing” BS.

        The problem is the kids themselves, and that stems directly from the way they are treated and raised today. Kids aren’t learning the basics of respect, social interaction, or even basic manners. If you wonder why the mall has to take steps like this, it’s because you’ll end up in jail for telling some punk to keep it down, or pull up their pants. (And I say in jail, as in there will probably be a confrontation from this said interaction.)

        I’m not a firm believer in NIMBY, but if I can’t take the necessary steps to change the problem then yeah, move them somewhere else.

        (I have the distinct feeling that I’ll be carrying a cane when I get old. Probably not that I’ll need it to help me walk, but so I can wack people when they are being stupid.)

        1. You know, kids wanting to get out in public spaces isn’t a crime. Just because you spent your childhood being a total introvert doesn’t mean all kids only deserve the choices that you made.

          Secondly, you pose that kids aren’t learning respect, social interaction, or manners? Apart from the obvious counter-productivity of complaining about social interaction and then advocating they stay at home in their spare time, let me tell you how children learn: They mimick. If you want children to be respectful, show them that you are respectful, and treat them with respect. Lumping them all together and slagging them, as you have just done, does not accomplish this.

          Most teenagers I have met are perfectly polite and respectful if you address them. They have a horrible sense of looking where their going or volume, but they are children and they’re learning.

          I’m the father of a two-year old. Let me tell you, that’s not a pleasant age to be around, it’s a good thing they’re cute. If you want to talk about lack of respect, I see it most in anybody who doesn’t want to have to put up crying babies because they’re too busy indulging themselves.

          What an insane society we must live in. Sure we talk about children being the future, but at the end of the day we treat them as a nuisance to our ability to indulge ourselves.

          Poor kids.

  77. I’m an old man, but I’m going to call bullshit on this.

    First, as a society the US had made a decision to eliminate all public space. The only place teens can congregate are public parks and public libraries. Congregate in a public library and you’ll be kicked out for talking, rightly so. Congregate in a park and police will assume you are up to no good. Or cranky locals will complain that you’re making noise after 8 PM. Fucking parks in So Cal put bike locks on basketball hoops between 8-9 PM. Party’s over. GTFO. They don’t, however, turn the lights off on the tennis courts. That’s intentional.

    What’s left? The food court of your local mall. You can’t hang out at Starbucks because you have to pay $5 just to sit. You can’t hang out at any other restaurants, fast food or otherwise, because it costs. Teens are not wealthy.

    Want to work out? Even the YMCA wants something like $50/month. What are teens supposed to do? Where are they supposed to go? Being social as a teenager is like air or water. They perish without it. Our society does not want to spend penny one on teens. We just expect them to shut the hell up or go away.

    I don’t like malls at all. I find them crass, shabby, and dull. That’s not because of teens. But the US has decided as a culture to put malls at the center of civic life. On any beautiful summer night, the streets are free of pedestrians, the parks are free of athletes, the beaches are empty, the malls are packed. America.

    And that’s in the summer. What about in cities where rain and snow are the norm? Then the mall is the only option. Period.

    Our society should allocate resources to public gymnasiums and public venues for study, socializing, or just idle pleasure. Or open up school space until 11 PM just for the purpose of teens socializing. Instead, we look down on such spending as largesse and indulgence. Meanwhile, we ship fucking pallets of taxpayer-stolen hundred dollar bills to Iraq where they disappear into the bottomless maw of local warlords and amorphous graft.

    We also brainwash those same teens into fodder to shepherd our tax money to those same third world warlords. It’s obscene. And then, this most violent of societies, weapons Walmart to the world, has the temerity to squawk when occasionally some teens get into a fight. So any sort of program is shut down in knee jerk fashion if a scuffle breaks out and the naughty teens are all told to go home, because they “can’t control themselves.”

    As adults we have some real balls to criticize this young generation for spending its time playing World of Warcraft or Xbox 360 when we give them few other options.

    Obviously, I don’t blame teens. This is the fault of their elders. It’s indicative of our collective failure.

    Are some teens unruly? Hell, yes. The vast majority absolutely are not. As a society, we ought to be ambitious enough and care enough to engage the issue instead of just waving our fingers at teens and saying: “You suck.”

    1. “They don’t, however, turn the lights off on the tennis courts. That’s intentional.

      What’s left?”

      Learn tennis, clearly. Or read a book maybe, that’s always good; lots of free ones that that library you mentioned. You can even read them there if it’s too noisy at home.

      I suppose it’s completely out of the question to hang out with your friends at your home or their home like I did when I was a kid?

  78. I live very close to this mall and go to it often, and I for one am thrilled over this new policy.

    The kids there run like crazy people constantly, and I’ve said for some time that either the parents need to stay with them, or the mall security needs to step in and do something.

  79. America will casually drop a couple billion on some nuclear sub that is obsolete and useless before it even hits the water. That *ONE* sub would pay for midnight basketball, kickball, softball for every city and town across the country. Every one. Every teen. All across our nation. And that physical activity would help to alleviate depression and obesity.

    But Americans, Democrat and Republican, consider that sub a more prudent investment than “blowing” money on some dumb-ass teens.

    No candidate from the left or right would dare run on a platform of providing entertainment for teens. Sending those teens to fight in Iran, the United Arab Emirates, or the Sudan (wherever our next exciting venue for mayhem is) is another story. That’s a “responsible” position. Worthy of our great leaders.

    That’s our national value system biting us in the ass. If you’re an asshole as a parent, odds are good your kid will follow in your footsteps.

  80. If Cincinnati teens want to hang out at a mall, there are still several in the area without this policy. My biggest question is how will the adults spend their money when no one is at the register? Plenty of kids get their first jobs in mall stores, but they won’t be able to get to work.

  81. A lot of you are missing the big point here.

    This means teens have to bring someone older (with more money) to the mall. Someone to “watch” them, sure, but someone to buy them things as well.

    Third space (not school/work and not home/shopping) is so desperately needed in poor and affluent communities alike. Working in libraries I can tell you, we get hordes of kids who just want a place to hang out, gab, do homework and just BE after school. We give them their own space and a wide-berth. People are stunned how polite kids are when you treat them like patrons and not suspects.

    1. >> People are stunned how polite kids are when you treat them like patrons and not suspects.

      Yes, exactly.

      The other thing is the racial component. One of the many manias that grips all of America is gang paranoia. When most people see a group of black, or Asian, or Latino kids in a loud and animated (are teens of any race ever anything but loud and animated?) group, they immediately assume they are a “gang.”

      And this fear and suspicion is amplified if the kids are wearing hip hop related fashion (the popular baggy pants complaint, which is just poorly disguised racism).

      I don’t know anything about this Tri-County Mall or the area of town it is in, but I’d be willing to wager there is some uncomfortable racial cross current that is not being addressed in the press coverage. Perhaps those who live in the area can comment on this.

      1. Yes, sadly that is very true.

        I dealt with it at a library I worked at while in school. The community had a growing Latino population but was still largely white. On more than one occasion a patron would pull me or another staff member aside, point to a table of Latino kids (who were no more or less rambunctious than any other young adult) and warn us about “the gang problem” that was “growing”

        Being scared of your own children marks a society in decline.

  84. >> According to a recent study by the Metropolitan Research Corporation, entitled “Cincinnati Metropatterns,” social inequality in the Cincinnati area is among the worst in the nation. Researchers, who compared local government tax revenues from the region’s richest 5 percent of the population with tax revenues contributed by the poorest 5 percent, found a ratio of 32-to-1, the second greatest gap in the US, topped only by the Tampa Bay, Florida region. The national ratio is 11-to-1.

    >> A drive around Cincinnati gives one a sense of the gross inequities reflected in these numbers. Within minutes one can travel from an impoverished neighborhood like Over-the-Rhine, where unemployed youth fill the streets in front of abandoned buildings and storefronts, to areas with meticulously manicured lawns and gardens, country clubs and million-dollar homes.

    http://xml.wsws.org/articles/2001/jun2001/cinc-j26.shtml

    The Tri-County Mall (stands astride three counties: Butler, Warren, and Hamilton) is literally four miles from Warren County, the second most affluent county (Delaware County is first) in Ohio and one of the most affluent counties in the nation.

    http://publicrecords.onlinesearches.com/maps/map-of-Warren-County-Ohio.htm

    Cincinnati is 52% white. Warren County is 94% white.

    >> On the north side of the region, or Warren County, you’ll find a much more affluent area than any other suburb of Cincinnati. Warren County is one of the fastest growing communities in Ohio and is home to many respectable business owners, politicians, and upper working-class Cincinnatians. Warren County has some of the most premier shopping experiences in the area, but the downside to that is price point. There is little to offer the frugal and diligent shopper. Also, the people are, by far, more “snooty” in general than any other area of town. It is not unusual to be cut-off in traffic, judged the type of vehicle you drive, or out-casted from social classes due to income level.

    http://www.examiner.com/x-25968-Cincinnati-Real-Estate-Examiner~y2009m10d24-Moving-to-Cincinnati-From-the-Inside-Out

  85. >> Amazing how the little things get people all riled up.

    If one isn’t a teen and doesn’t live in Ohio, it must seem little indeed.

    1. King Melchior: Have you seen a child the color of wheat, the color of dawn?

      Security guard: Can I see some ID?

  87. Anyone care to comment on #66? Children under the age of 18 are legally untouchable. It’s practically impossible to do anything meaningful under the law. Call the police and those same kids will be back in the mall the next day looking for revenge, and the security guards can’t do anything to them without opening themselves and the mall to a lawsuit. The kids aren’t stupid. They know this and use it to their advantage.

    The real problem is NOT that kids nowadays don’t have a place to hang out. The problem is that parents in the US no longer raise their children.

    This is the most clear-cut First World problem I’ve seen in a long time.

  88. I live in a small Southern California town. In one of the nearby malls, teens congregate in large numbers. Packs break off from the main groups and go up and down the mall, flashing gang signs at each other and occasionally starting fist fights and always engaging in shouting matches. The main groups occupy every available place to sit down and rest your feet while issuing sullen stares at passers by.
    At the next-nearest mall, there are roughly the same number of teens. They circulate through the mall without causing a ripple. I laud the parents.
    My family and I shop at the second one.

  89. Valley View Mall, which is probably the largest mall here in Southwest Virginia, has this too. They even call have the same name for it, “Youth Escort Policy (YEP)”. Must have the same consulting company. http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/124244

    I suppose this is what happens when we allow our society to develop an idea of “public spaces” that are privately owned.

  90. So…what about the 16-18 year olds that work at one of the stores in the mall; do they have to be escorted in and out and on their breaks by a 21 year old?

  91. This has been pointed out, but has been drowned out in the “kids are shits/kids got nowhere to go” shouting match.

    Malls can face serious legal consequences for evicting unruly or disruptive teens. The malls can’t just ask unattended non-adults to leave for that reason.

    Thus, the malls are left with three alternatives:

    Have teens arrested and taken into custody by police for behavior that may not actually rise to the level of a criminal offense, or is trivially criminal.

    Tolerate behavior that is disruptive and possibly even financially damaging.

    Expect non-adults to be accompanied by an adult.

    I don’t see any reason why ANY private business should have to tolerate disruptive or economically damaging behavior. Regardless of what we, as a society, have done to public spaces, or to subsidize malls, it is clearly possible for teens to behave in a non-disruptive manner.

    It also seems preferable to expect non-adults to be escorted by adults, than to put teens into the juvenile criminal justice system for minor disruptive activities. I think most teens would rather have to go to the mall with Mom than have Mom pick them up at the police station.

    Really, if you find the idea of monitoring your OWN children so onerous, and being around them in public so unacceptable, perhaps you should not have become a parent. Since when is being expected to be responsible for your non-adult offspring such an unbearable burden for parents?

    1. Since when is being expected to be responsible for your non-adult offspring such an unbearable burden for parents?

      Since when are parents expected to follow their teenagers around 24/7?

  92. The mall that I work in in Winston Salem NC started doing this in march.. you have to have an escort Friday and Saturday after 6 if you are 18 or younger. I actually like it, because as soon as 5 o’clock hits they start making announcements every 15 minutes until 6 and I notice that 5 or 6 is when a lot of families show up with younger kids. It’s just easier, I think, for all of the shop owners, because the younger unattended kids are the ones who cause the bulk of the problems..

  93. If you want children to learn how to be adults, they’re going to have to be treated with some respect (like adults). Treating them like private liabilities of their parents (ie: property) is insulting.

    Security can’t touch teenagers fighting? This is any different then touching adults fighting?

    It’s agism, pure and simple. You’re pre-supposing what these kids are going to do based upon a demographic. You telling me you couldn’t make arguments with certain racial minorities causing more trouble, like for instance, shoplifting?

    1. No, they’re _not_ ‘pre-supposing’. They’re responding to an actual, existing problem that occurred because they originally ‘pre-supposed’ that those kids would be able to behave themselves.

      Some of them do, but too many of them do not. It’s unfortunate for everyone involved.

      @Antinous – No, you shouldn’t have to escort your kids everywhere, but we’re not telling parents to escort them everywhere. We’re telling them to escort them to the mall during certain high-traffic times. We make similar rules in other locations as well, like requiring parents to stay with their children at public pools. How is this different?

      Last, the police stopped responding to calls at my local mall, unless they involved ongoing assault. Yes, ongoing assault. Assault that was over wasn’t enough to make them come out.

      The mall literally had no other option but to put a similar policy in place. And it worked _wonderfully_.

      Does anyone have a better solution?

  94. “I don’t see any reason why ANY private business should have to tolerate disruptive or economically damaging behavior. Regardless of what we, as a society, have done to public spaces, or to subsidize malls, it is clearly possible for teens to behave in a non-disruptive manner.”

    1) This isn’t about tolerating inappropriate behaviour. This is about pre-supposing innocent people would commit said inappropriate behaviour before they have done anything.

    2) Subsidizing private spaces and ignoring public ones is no trivial matter, and yes, teens can, and usually do, behave in a civil manner.

  95. wahh, kids cant goto malls and buy shit they dont need? who cares? I never went to a mall as a kid (Im 28) and I had a great childhood. Maybe instead of whining about the lack of a mall, people should engage these young PEOPLE with real, interesting, challenging activities–shopping, window or otherwise, is none of what i listed above.

  96. For those banging on that they didn’t go to the mall as a kid and they turned out just fine, that may very well be true in your experience, but not for everyone.

    In some communities, shopping centers are the only place you can be in air conditioning in the summer, or get cheap food/drinks in a food court, or where the movie theaters can be found, or simply the place with public seating.

    Public seating, yes, the thing they keep taking away in major American cities because *GASP* homeless people might be found on those benches. You can go for miles in some ‘burbs and never find a place outdoors to sit.

    Kids like to hang out. They stand around, talk, gossip, make a little noise, but generally they’re pretty damn harmless. If you address them with even a modicum of common courtesy they tend to respond well actually. If you come at them like a house on fire and act like they’re a mongol horde because they bought a couple Orange Julii and have been loitering (with intent!) for nearly a half hour, they’re going to laugh at you, and you deserve it.

  97. The mall in the article doesn’t seem to have a movie theater, which removes my one big parental objection to the policy.

    There’s an awful lot of anger here about parents who allow their children to go to the mall without parental oversight. It’s an odd contrast to BoingBoing posts about Free-Range kids, when BoingBoingers are furious about overprotective parents. Which is it going to be? Are parents supposed to accompany their kids everywhere, or are we supposed to let them fend for themselves?

    And yep, my teenagers go to the mall by themselves, or in the company of a couple of friends. If they’re 12 or 13, they’ll blow a couple of weeks of allowance on useless crap. If they’re older, they’re searching for a specific outfit. They go through a bunch of stores, find what they want, put it on hold and then call their mall-hating mom or dad to come and pay for it. Since they only do this a few times a year, it’s not a major component of their social life. If a local mall were to say that I had to escort my utterly responsible 17 year old, then our business would go elsewhere.

    1. Our readership unfortunately includes a lot of child-haters. It comes out all the time.

  98. To those who keep saying “do something else” or “go someplace else,” please be so kind as to list any place where a large group of teens can go to laugh with their friends, flirt with each other, and just generally be boisterous and enjoy each other’s company without having to spend money? And even when they do spend money, they are hounded like criminals.

    Let’s say a group of teens pay up to gather in a fast food place. How long do you think it will be before their rowdiness (and BTW, are teens really any more rowdy than adults when gathered together? Have you been to any parties lately? People talk… loud. And it’s natural to get excited in the company of other humans. To teenagers, a lot of that is brand new and thrilling) causes them to get the stink eye and ultimately a notice to vacate from the local rent-a-cop? Fifteen minutes? Ten?

    Youth group meetings? That’s all about having to sit around and endure indoctrination. Their friends’ houses? How many parents ever allow more than three teens to gather in their home? I’m not talking about places where teens can gather in groups of two or three. I’m talking about places where they can go as a group to enjoy each other’s company, which is not a crime. Even if those who are older or prone to solitude and bookish pursuits regard the rowdiness of gathered teens as “trouble making.”

    Where can they go?

    The park? A group of ten teens in a park will be broken up instantly by cops. A parking lot? Same. Where?

    It sounds like most people here are of the opinion that teens can go some place else, any place else, just as long as no one has to see or hear them.

    Christ.

    None of you people were ever 15?

    1. “To those who keep saying “do something else” or “go someplace else,” please be so kind as to list any place where a large group of teens can go to laugh with their friends, flirt with each other, and just generally be boisterous and enjoy each other’s company without having to spend money?”
      One of their respective houses.

      1. One of their respective houses.

        And what if they don’t want to grow up to be agoraphobic neer-do-wells?

        I gotta tell ya. Back when I was a teen in the 1980s, the fact one had to go to stores to buy things an do things saved my life. Wanted music, went to the record store. Wanted toys, go to the toy store. Want clothes, go to a clothes store.

        Rarely went to a mall. Ever.

        So small town America and mom & pop small stores disappear and what’s left? Malls. And they are now sooooo uniform that they offer no variety.

        So where do the kids hang out? No clue indeed.

        1. “And what if they don’t want to grow up to be agoraphobic neer-do-wells?”
          I didn’t realize that a pile of kids hanging out at a friend’s house was somehow worse than the mall. They are hanging out. Loitering. Which building they do it in is irrelevant.

          “So where do the kids hang out? No clue indeed.”
          Why is this relevant? It’s not the mall’s responsibility to care about where kids can hang out other than the mall. Nor should it be.

          The employees, customers, and shareholders have a vested interest in the success of the mall. (While not all malls are publicly traded, many of the shops in them are so shareholders still applies as these businesses may pressure the mall staff on behalf of said shareholders).

          The employees want it to stay around grow so that they keep their jobs, get raises, move up in the company. Customers want their favorite stores to stay around, new stores and offerings to appear, and to spend their money in comfort. Shareholders want the bottom line to keep going up each year.

          If there are complaints from paying customers that non-paying customers are disrupting their experience and they are considering going elsewhere with their money it would be ENTIRELY IRRESPONSIBLE of the mall not to make a rule like this. Far too many people, and the mall itself, have a vested interest in it’s ongoing success.

          1. You sound like Joe McCarthy. You know, this issue of “teens” ruining things has existed for centuries. Might want to rent out “Blackboard Jungle” or read “Romeo & Juliet.”

            Or perhaps look back on your own childhood if you had one. Or admit you did. I’m 42 and amazed how many people I know deny their own behavior in their childhood (good and bad) and have become proto-fascists.

            Enjoy your Cinnabon in peace!

  99. >> I suppose it’s completely out of the question to hang out with your friends at your home or their home like I did when I was a kid?

    I was raised in a middle class family and I had enough allowance to go to the video game arcade, pizza place, or movie theater. I was fortunate enough to live in a city with beaches, parks, libraries. A ton of venues for entertainment.

    The key here though is availability of: 1) money, 2) venues, 3) family, 4) friends.

    It should also be noted that I was fortunate enough to live in a town where I could bike or walk to my friend’s houses. But in 2010, many kids can only visit other friends if mom or dad drives them and that costs big money. Maybe it means nothing to you, but someone on a tight income can’t just give junior a twenty or play soccer mom taxiing the brood around in the SUV. That twenty might be the entire month’s allotment for fuel and no lie.

    I’ve traveled to many countries and all over North America and I’ve realized my life was not typical. If you don’t have money you can eliminate about 80% of the venues (assuming they even exist in your town). If your family simply does not want you around (quite common), that’s off the table. If you have fewer friends, the choices narrow. If you are of a particular race or class, additional venues are off limits.

    I don’t think most BBers had to contend with this as teens. I could gather with six of my friends in a restaurant because as it turned out we were white and male and we had money. As a white man, I can state unequivocally that there are different rules for me than others who don’t benefit from what my society deems to be the most innocuous and ideal ratio of pigment.

    I worked with some teenagers who were black, low income, and immigrants. I tried to find as many venues as I could for them to amuse themselves. But I had to constantly involve myself with law enforcement, school officials, library staff to explain to them that my friends were not gangbangers.

    There’s a reason why certain people end up sitting on the stoop of their apartment. And even then many are chased indoors by the landlords who don’t want them lazing around and shooting the shit in a way that makes the property seem substandard. Unless you know someone or ARE someone, you won’t realize that so much of the opulence and opportunity of America, most really, is completely and totally off limits.

    I mean many Americans sit around on the weekend with a couple of beers and cook shit in their BACKYARD. Behind. A. Fence. Guess what? Many people don’t have a backyard. Their backyard is the front stoop of their apartment. A tiny six-by-six slab of concrete. Or the grill at the park.

    But when twelve Mexicans or blacks or Vietnamese gather in the park and start cooking their weird food or playing their weird music, if it’s in the wrong neighborhood, it draws a formal response from law enforcement. A police officer does not have to arrest a group or physically shoo them away, but communities have many, many effective ways of staking their turf and making it crystal clear that you do not belong.

    That’s hard to take.

    And many teens have not yet learned to be docile and just give up as so many adults have done.

    And here’s the other thing… is this really where we are as a society that we just want teens to stay indoors and not bother us? And what do you think they’ll do indoors? Well, what do YOU do? That’s precisely why kids end up surfing online or playing Xbox 360 all weekend and just shoving oreos in their face. So, yes, if you want teens to get off the street, out of your sight, and not disturb you with the spark of life that has long since been extinguished in your own leaden and morbid soul, mission accomplished. They are being beaten and we have won.

    Congrats.

  101. “But in 2010, many kids can only visit other friends if mom or dad drives them and that costs big money.”
    They are getting to the mall. They can use the same method of transportation they would be using to get there to go to a friend’s house instead.

    Bottom line a mall doesn’t go about making this rule unless there have been complaints. Either legal ones with fighting/shoplifting/etc or other complaints from patrons that spend actual money.

    You argument keeps referring to the kids as not having enough money to go somewhere else. So you are saying they are in the mall just to hang out and loiter. Or, in some cases, to be disruptive (loud, in the way, etc) or perhaps even shoplift.

    If they are disrupting paying patrons for any reason up to and including being an eyesore the establishment has every right to remove them or create some restriction that makes them less likely to be there. It’s a business. They SHOULD be thinking of their bottom line before thinking about kids’ social lives. That’s not the business they are in.

  102. >> One of their respective houses.

    Recall, if you will, your own life as a teen.

    Did you want to meet girls (or boys, as the case may be)? Where did you meet them? In school? At church? Certainly not at your friend’s house.

    Most families of teens will draw the line at 2-6 teens tops. And a lot of parents just want their kids to disappear and not be a bother. A mall offers a completely unique opportunity that cannot be duplicated in any other venue. Not a church, school, or park.

    It allows teens who are strangers to meet in large groups and make friends. You cannot even begin to compare having two of your friends over for pizza rolls and Super Smash Brothers to meeting girls and hanging out at the mall. Night and day.

    Adults have the cash, the mobility, the venues to meet other people. Teens often have their two feet and five bucks to last the week.

    I love reading books, but I’m over 40. To tell a teen to just go read a book or scan some blogs when they want to be out meeting people is unrealistic and cruel. It’s also anti-human and deadly dull.

    And how is it even remotely reasonable to tell these teens, 99% of whom are perfectly well behaved, that they are barred from this place unless accompanied by a parent because last week two guys “flashed gang signs” (as if most of us even have a clue what a real gang sign looks like) and another pair punched each other for three minutes before the rent-a-cops dragged them apart?

    How would you feel if you showed up to your favorite coffee house tomorrow and were told you can’t come in unless accompanied by your spouse because last week, two other forty year-old guys who also wore Red Sox baseball hats were punching each other in the parking lot?

    Going to the mall with your parent is a complete repudiation of what going to the mall alone represents for a teen. It’s as close to adult autonomy as they can get at that age. And to take that away and confine them to the basement with their Nintendo DS and a good book will only guarantee that they turn into adults with even worse socialization skills than their already dysfunctional parents.

    None of you remember sitting in your house with one or two of your buddies saying: “What do you want to do now?” Bored off your nut.

    And finally — FINALLY — someone said: “Let’s go out.” For a teen, out is life.

    It’s also life for adults, because in many instances teens know important things that we have forgotten or foolishly rejected as worthless or immature.

    Here’s another thing, I was fortunate enough to have the money to get to spend four years at a college where I got to live on campus for a bit and then afford an apartment off-campus. A lot of people don’t have this. They have to live with their families or they can’t even afford community college. There are a lot of social opportunities that we privileged few just ask “well, why can’t people do this or that?”

    Finally, here’s a very, very simple exercise.

    Think of your own life as an adult right now. Imagine all of the places you go for amusement. Now eliminate all of the venues that: 1) cost money, 2) require a car, or 3) can only be visited on a sunny day.

    What’s left?

    And then really think about your friends. Your family. In the place that you live right now. Do you really have that many people that would be pleased to have you and six of your closest friends hang out twice a week?

    The list is pretty narrow now, isn’t it?

    1. A better question:

      What does any of that have to do with the mall?

      The mall is not responsible for the development and entertainment of these teens, so all of the reasons that teens like to hang out at malls and the fact that they do need somewhere to hang out don’t really matter.

      Also, in answer to your question: Community centers. That’s what they’re for.

    2. “Recall, if you will, your own life as a teen.

      Did you want to meet girls (or boys, as the case may be)? Where did you meet them? In school? At church? Certainly not at your friend’s house.”
      At school, after school (sports/clubs), and yes at my friends’ houses. They knew people I didn’t know (yet).

      “Most families of teens will draw the line at 2-6 teens tops. And a lot of parents just want their kids to disappear and not be a bother.”
      Not the mall’s responsibility to care. Nor the responsibility of paying customers that may want their experience less disrupted.

      “And how is it even remotely reasonable to tell these teens…that they are barred from this place unless accompanied by a parent”
      Because the customers of the mall complained and a business made a business-focused decision. There needs to be no other reason. Life isn’t fair. Sooner a kid learns that the better.

      “How would you feel if you showed up to your favorite coffee house tomorrow and were told you can’t come in unless accompanied by your spouse…”
      *shrug* I would never tell them they shouldn’t do it if they believe it’s in the best interests of their bottom line. I may disagree and argue that they will make more money if they remove the rule but…that would be the extent of my argument. I, unlike what seems the majority of society, don’t feel irrationally entitled to things I had yesterday today.

      “None of you remember sitting in your house with one or two of your buddies saying: “What do you want to do now?” Bored off your nut.”
      No, actually.

      “What’s left?”
      “The list is pretty narrow now, isn’t it?”
      You may have an argument that society should care and come up with a place for them. But you have no argument that a private business should fail to respond to customer complaints and slowly drive itself closer to out of business because kids are bored and don’t have a place to hang out.

      @Jack
      “You sound like Joe McCarthy. You know, this issue of “teens” ruining things has existed for centuries. Might want to rent out “Blackboard Jungle” or read “Romeo & Juliet.”
      I haven’t experienced any issues with teens in my malls locally. But to think this mall dreamt up this rule out of the blue isn’t likely. They had complaints from paying customers. They responded, correctly, to make these customers happy and continue to spend their money and grow the mall business. It’s their responsibility. They do not have any responsibility to be a teen hangout/daycare.

  104. I humbly suggest that we need a BB-wide viewing and subsequent discussion of Footloose and Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

    My peoples, did Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon teach us nothing?

    Off to the Submitterator!

  106. Well Indy I they are trying something like this out only because of the gangs. There have been a but load of killing in and around the Circle Center Mall because of gang violence. Is it an end all solution? No but it might cut out some of the stupidity so all people can enjoy the mall.

    It is just the bad seeds that the world seems to have to level down to and it suck when other ruin it for all.

  107. they have been doing this in wisconsin for a long time, the milwaukee area malls have been enforcing this policy for a while and it has worked extremely well, keeping the groups of kids that do nothing but loiter out, and keeping fights and mall violence to a minimum. To me there is nothing big brother about this, just common sense, analyzing the statistics, and solving problems.

  108. But to think this mall dreamt up this rule out of the blue isn’t likely. They had complaints from paying customers.

    So basically your understanding of this issue is not based on the facts, but rather your personal prejudices and hatred of youth filtered through the topic of this post? How informative!

    They do not have any responsibility to be a teen hangout/daycare.

    Have you ever worked retail? Being a babysitter—even to adults—is part of the business. If you don’t understand the issues of retail and how asinine this rule is, sorry.

    1. “So basically your understanding of this issue is not based on the facts, but rather your personal prejudices and hatred of youth filtered through the topic of this post? How informative!”
      And all of these posts above are all facts? They have all have “nowhere to go”? They couldn’t go hang out a friend’s instead of the mall? My assumptions are no more than theirs.

      The article clearly states the business believes it will have a positive impact on the shopping experience. That is all the reason they need to make the change.

      “Have you ever worked retail? Being a babysitter—even to adults—is part of the business. If you don’t understand the issues of retail and how asinine this rule is, sorry.”
      Being part of the business and being the responsibility of the business are entirely different things. The business’s responsibility is to make money and grow. If they think this change will help them make more money and grow they should make the change. The article states that they do believe so.

      1. DirkSJ, unless you have a vested interest in this specific mall, your endless screeds about “…business’s responsibility is to make money and grow…” are utterly bizarre. I’ve never met anyone not directly connected to a business who was so passionate about a business’ bottom line.

        Are you a mall cop?

        1. “I’ve never met anyone not directly connected to a business who was so passionate about a business’ bottom line.”
          He’s probably a libertarian. Libertarians love nothing so much as unfettered, cruel heartless greed. Nothing is too terrible for so long as it makes a profit. Kicking teens out of a mall is nothing to them.

  109. “DirkSJ, unless you have a vested interest in this specific mall”
    I don’t care two cents about this mall. I care about the principles behind the discussion.

    “I’ve never met anyone not directly connected to a business who was so passionate about a business’ bottom line.”
    I am passionate about businesses not being bashed for making rational decisions. If someone/thing doesn’t do something wrong they shouldn’t be bashed for it.

    They think this change will create a positive difference in the shopping experience. If they honestly believe that, and the article says they do, then they should make the change. That’s what being in a business is all about.

    Now if you want to argue that it will not positively impact their bottom line then perhaps you have an argument about why they shouldn’t do it. Because kids like to hang out and they will be terribly inconvenienced is not a relevant nor rational argument.

    “Are you a mall cop?”
    No. I’m a programmer.

    @Locien
    I’m not associated with any party. I agree with some things each party says and disagree with others. I disagree with how little government libertarians want, since you brought them up specifically.

    1. DirkSJ,

      You’re repeating yourself. If you don’t have anything new to add, stop.

      1. “DirkSJ,

        You’re repeating yourself. If you don’t have anything new to add, stop.”
        *shrug* They keep directing comments @me so I keep replying…their points haven’t changed much either from post to post, honestly.

        I’ll leave the thread alone though. Thank you for asking nicely :).

  110. @DirkSJ,

    Libertarian much? The sooner a kid learns life isn’t fair the better?

    So someone who has never had a birthday should be left on the street to fend for themselves? (Under a year old) Clearly you need to clarify what you mean here.

    Also, businesses get to exclude based on gender, race, weight, wardrobe, height, and makeup choices too, right?

    Go for it. As much as legal precedent apparently makes security unable to defend themselves against gun-toting 7-yr-olds, I want to patronize your cigar store that is only open to heterosexual white males over 30 and 6′ wearing suits and without genital piercings, complete with inspections which are definitely NOT hot.

    There’s no legal issues there, not at all.

  111. Man, there’s a lot of crotchety old grandpas hollerin’ at them darn kids to get off their lawns here today.

  112. Heck, the malls in my area have done this for years. We’ve had lots of problems with teenage shoplifters.

  113. A few of the posts make it sound like the posters believe this to be a misguided attempt to protect youth. It certainly isn’t; it’s an attempt (guided?, misguided? you choose) to protect the mall.

    It seems to me that this is a business decision, which will either be good or bad. I guess they’ll find out. [Then again, I’m one of those strange people who think bars and restaurants (and their customers) should make the decision to allow smoking or not and not to be forced by law one way or the other…]

    Slightly tangentially: I haven’t been to a mall in years, and I’m surprised that people still hang out at them. My personal opinion is that malls are more of a societal problem than youth acting-up.

    Just when [i]is[/i] BB going to get a dose of the “act locally/sustainable” meme?

  116. My sense is that this is suicidal. Kids are the only thing keeping many malls around me alive, and if it weren’t for the teeming throngs of them roaming the concourses, most malls would have about as much life as a mausoleum. It is a stupid idea.

  117. It’s not the mall owner’s responsibility to find something for these kids to go. They are running a business – and can put in place whatever legal policies they want. Don’t like it? Build your own mall and run it differently!

  118. Haven’t gotten to the end of the comments yet, but I’d better get this in before it slips out of my (grandpa-cohort) mind:

    Revisit the first scene of Romeo and Juliet.

    “If ever you disturb our streets again,
    Your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace.”

    At least they weren’t brawling in the food court.

  119. Our local mall, Hickory Hollow, had to institute everyday curfews like this about 3-4 years ago, after a huge gang war. Many of those kids have grown up since then, but they didn’t grow out of the gangbanging, gunplay and hooliganism.

  120. let’s talk about this particular mall again. i was actually there about a week ago and saw the sign announcing the new policy. guess what? i decided on the spot not to shop there anymore. i’m 23 now, but i’ve not forgotten how it feels to be young and treated like a problem waiting to happen. not shopping there is no problem for me. there are 3 other malls in cincinnati that are within a 15 minute drive of this mall, one of which is much nicer.

    @DirkSJ:
    “They couldn’t go hang out a friend’s instead of the mall?”

    well, maybe not. when i was that age, i had very few friends with homes that had the space to accommodate us for the evening. most of our houses simply weren’t big enough and many of us had younger siblings with early bedtimes. for the most part, our homes barely accommodated the people that lived there.

    instead, we mostly found interesting, unusual, and often dangerous things to do. we went to this mall occasionally, but in all honesty we only ever got ourselves into trouble on our other adventures. when we did go, we didn’t usually spend much, but we’d at least spend money on food.

  122. Mixed emotions on this. I can understand the rationale — we had a gang-related shooting in the local mall the day after Christmas a few years back. But these restrictions seem too tight.

    Best I can come up with as an alternative is limit size of groups of young people to prevent gangs, and an over 21 (or parent/legal guardian) escort for anyone under 16 or any group that exceeds the limit.

  124. Interesting (sad) story: I’m 38 and I like to yoyo while waiting for my wife to shop at the mall. I’ve been told me security many times to stop yoyoing. I’ve even been kicked out once. They say that I can’t be doing entertaining things or else everyone else will think they can do entertaining things.

    I understand that a mall is private property and they can basically make up any rules they want, but it felt very surreal for me approaching middle age and being told by security that I can’t move my arms and hands in a dazzling formation inside the mall…

    If I have to sit in that husband/boyfriend couch, chair or bench, I’m gonna off myself.

  125. So many comments! As one whose teen years occurred in the late Fifties/early Sixties, I missed out on the “mall” as it later became. Luckily I enjoyed reading, as drinking beer in the woods or the drivein (this was a hick town in Florida) and the other “Porky’s” stuff lacked appeal. I think “Trotsky” has the best takes generally. “Businessmen have the right to do whatever they want” may be TRUE, but it isn’t RIGHT. I did a little marching on behalf of a different group back in the day. Of course, they didn’t “grow out of” their condition and tell the next generation “when you’re slapped, take it and like it.”

  126. I’m 32, and I definitely remember a good part of my teen years being spent in malls. As a young adult, I’ve lived in two cities with malls. The first had a similar policy, only far more draconian than this one ever thought of being. There is never a time when kids under age 16 are allowed to be in the mall without a parent or legal guardian and those under 18 aren’t allowed without an adult (21+) after 5pm any day of the week.

    That city, also has precious few opportunities for teenagers. There are bars, a few parks with a ridiculously early curfew (7 pm for unsupervised minors), the public library (with limited hours, and few resources for anyone who isn’t under age 12 or an adult), Wal-Mart and the Mall. The community does not support the public schools, and the local police department has been investigated by the state more than once for their harassment of teenagers.

    The city I currently live in, has no such policy at it’s mall, which is in fact usually filled with teenagers. Incidentally we also have 27 neighborhood youth centers, an excellent public library with a teen center, and a lot of programs put together by the public school system.

    The teenagers in the former mall did have a reputation for being loud and obnoxious. There were acts of vandalism on an almost daily basis. They were wild, out of control, before this policy. Now they’re just wild and out of control someplace else.

    The teenagers at the mall in my current community are, for the most part, respectful. They gather in groups and drink sodas in the food court, or use the big comfy chairs in the concourse while they gossip. They shop, and spend an enormous amount of money. Are they sometimes loud, yes, but no more so than any other group I come across at the mall. I have never seen a physical fight at our mall that did not involve an adult. I have never seen an act of vandalism at our mall.

    I think the difference is that in my city, teenagers are valued, members of the community. They are treated as if their lives matter. They aren’t told in words and in action that they are nuisances who should make themselves scarce. Are there always going to be some kids who cause trouble, absolutely. But most teenagers are just looking for a bit of respect and recognition. They want to be treated like the adults that they are expected to act like. Give that to them, and they’ll usually surprise you with their maturity.

    It’s also worth noting, that the mall here keeps expanding, while about 1/3 of the stores in the mall from my former town have closed in the last few years. I was recently there for a wedding, and in almost 2 hours of shopping, I saw eight non-employees at the mall.

  127. Kids SUCK! Except mine, of course. I will have to get an exemption for my daughters when they hit puberty, or else they’ll have to hang out in front of the 7-Eleven Like kids used to before we had a mall.

  128. @Antinous

    Actually I think DirkSJ is making some great cold-logic points. He has effective (for his arguement) one-liner responses to peoples statements. I find his unemotional responses very interesting.

    This has been a great load of posts – this is what I love about BB. At least posts are thought out, and not just mulling in the world of snark.

    I can see why the malls of the world do this. It’s quite easy to make that sort of decision, and it is far more humane than autocratically clamping down on kids.

    In Australia, I find that large public events are over-securitised. And not only that, but guards target certain people, and there sometimes seems to be hundreds of police. Of course this antagonises drunken-idiots, but then again drunken idiots are easily ruffled to respond extremely to any small situation.

    So from the malls perspective, it makes complete sense. Is it right on a meta level? Only for them. And it is private property. They can do what they want.

    Is it unfair to the kids? I actually dunno. I have thought for a while where you would go as a teenager in this helicopter-parenting world we are in. Probably the park. Apparently they get moved on from the park too, so I dunno.

    But another thought hit me. Who here/ what % of adults here were in the same exact situation as the kids who have nothing to do bored, lets go the mall sorta life? I didn’t! No way.

    I would have preferred friends who talked about sci-fi, music, weird shit, B-grade movies, politics, british comedy. I had no ‘gang’, I was picked on at school bigtime, and therefore missed out on a lot of possible friendships. So my joy was in staring at architecture, researching, playing music in my bedroom etc. And completely oblivious to any female interest in me (thinking I wasn’t worth it etc).

    I suspect the people who come to BB were a bit out of the ordinary as teenagers (I have yet to hear of someone born as a 21 year old). The kids at the mall, generally I percieved at 16, as being the ones who would bash me up. Instant threat really. So did I/ do I care about the ones who are particularly living an average, non-EQ life? No, not at all! They can go phuckemselves!

    But this is a society and parenting problem. Most family systems are sick, and the result is teenagers not allowed to express themselves throughout childhood, and when teenagehood comes, *bang* out it all comes. Like being a toddler.

    Most leftfield adults are also aggressive, but its hidden in layers of fog. Bound to come out as a huge disease one day, or an explosion. At least the physically violent kids act on what they do.

    No set view for one of the other really. Can see everyone’s point, and as it seems to be in human society, there’s never a straight answer to any problem involving more than, say, 5 humans or somesuch.

  129. The local mall, Crossgates, implemented a policy like this a few years ago for Fridays and weekends. Since Albany doesn’t really offer anywhere else for teens to hang out, it meant that options are limited and that a lot of people ended up driving an extra fifteen or twenty minutes to get to one of the other malls in the area. It means that if my friends and I miss the 4 o’clock cut-off, we’re stuck in whatever store we’re in until our parents come to find us, otherwise we get kicked out and can hang out in the bus stop for half an hour or so. It’s really a horrible policy and hasn’t done anything to stop kids from fighting in the mall or shoplifting, and it hurts to see other malls doing this too.

  130. I suppose the policy sucks and it will probably suck to be in that mall.

    Now, if they were to ban me from somewhere that wasn’t horrid and soul sucking, that would really suck.

  132. >> I absolutely do not agree with it on account that adults can be (and often are) just as rowdy as a bunch of teenage hooligans.

    People intentionally and disingenuously use incendiary, but ambivalent colloquialisms like “rowdy” and “hooligan” because they want to be able to dodge their implications if called on it. Both of those words have a casual, pseudo-comic implication, but also can be construed as menacing. It’s why Sarah Palin and other politicians intentionally drop their Gs and say things like “pallin’ around with terrorists.” It allows an out. An opportunity to feign surprise that their “casual” aside was taken so seriously.

    It allows a person to make a damning assertion, but not be responsible for what they are implying, which is usually a crime or action in excess of the actual occurrence.

    What precisely is “rowdy?” Is that criminal behavior? If so, say it clearly. Is it merely boisterous and lively? Then say that. What are “hooligans?” Again, are they criminals? Actually vandalizing and actually stealing? Then say so.

    BTW, spilling a soda cup in the food court and not picking it up is not vandalism. It is rude, but it’s not criminal. Talking loudly and laughing may be annoying (especially if taking place in a movie theater), but it’s not “gang activity.”

    Another favorite coded word is “thug.” The meaning there is clear to all. There’s a lot of innuendo and outright misinformation about teens and I suspect, about these teens in particular. If these teens are committing actual crimes, then they should be arrested. Like any other human. If they are just being loud, then a solution short of arrest or banishment should be implemented.

    If anyone involved with the mall is genuinely interested (and not just trying to score debate chits) in my perspective on solving this, I’ll be happy to burn up more pixels on this thread.

  133. The speech that this valedictorian gave is germane to this discussion.

    >> Yet, here I stand, and I am supposed to be proud that I have completed this period of indoctrination. I will leave in the fall to go on to the next phase expected of me, in order to receive a paper document that certifies that I am capable of work. But I contest that I am a human being, a thinker, an adventurer – not a worker. A worker is someone who is trapped within repetition – a slave of the system set up before him. But now, I have successfully shown that I was the best slave.

    http://blog.swiftkickonline.com/2010/07/valedictorian-speaks-out-against-schooling-in-graduation-speech.html

    That’s a teen that played by all of the rules and “won” and she’s calling bullshit on the system.

    Teens in most cases have not successfully learned to transition without question to the indoctrination and pathetic compliance of their elders. They have not learned to be confined to their compound or the quiet desperation and sham of the American Dream. They have not learned to sequester themselves indoors with a dog or cat or television or laptop or book. They want to meet other people and laugh. Imagine that. The hooligans.

    In many cases, teens don’t respect their elders because their elders are not worthy of respect. Teens in many instances have the most active, acute, and absolutely bullet-proof bullshit detectors and that pisses many people off who do not like being seen for who they really are. Bitter, alone, and frightened.

  136. Community centers?!

    What is this, the 50’s?

    Most communities can’t afford centers. Those that can have crappy little gear left over from the ’70’s. There’s still “adult supervision” (which is really the point of the mall — to get out from under your parents’ yoke for a night). Public spaces like parks are devoured regularly by private spaces like malls, and those that are left have curfews.

    All they need is freedom.

  137. As someone who has worked in malls, I’m glad this finally came to a mall in Milwaukee. I worked in a kiosk for the holidays and had change hit me and several other people several days in a row from a group of middle schoolers who where dropped off after school. I also enjoy a new theater in town that doesn’t allow under 21 after 7pm. That way I could enjoy movies like Wall•e without screaming children.

  138. As for “community centers,” most of the cities I’ve lived in had long, long since changed “community centers” to “conference centers.” In other words, places where business and business groups would PAY to use the rooms.

    In a city I lived in in the Pacific Northwest, the center would remain empty 95% of the day. Completely unused because only a few groups were paying. I wanted to tutor a half dozen immigrants, but they wouldn’t allow me to use the empty rooms because I was not with a vetted organization and did not want to pay to use the “community” resource.

    As a white man I had to be the face of validation for my black students, all male. Even then, only if affiliated with an acceptable NGO, and only with cash in hand. And that for educational purposes. Imagine if those same teens had just asked to sit in that room to play cards or talk about girls. They would have been laughed right out the door.

    Now, if a group of elderly bridge players want to pony up the cash to rent those rooms, they can. But the teens are ass out. Because… you know… they’re probably in a “gang.”

    Most of America’s ideas about it’s altruism and largesse simply do not exist any more. We’ve put just about every public service behind pay barriers.

    And even many parks which seem free on the face are spoken for from organized and paying sports clubs and groups who dominate a field to the exclusion of neighborhood kids who can’t just show up and use the facilities.

  140. You said: If anyone involved with the mall is genuinely interested (and not just trying to score debate chits) in my perspective on solving this, I’ll be happy to burn up more pixels on this thread.

    People have asked for an alternate solution about a dozen times. Are you going to supply one, or what?

  141. >> As I previously stated, we upped the security twice before implementing this solution.

    You say “we.”

    Are you affiliated with this Tri-County Mall?

    Assuming you are, you may have “upped it,” but clearly it never reached an adequate level. If a starving man requires 1,000 calories to survive and you incrementally “up” his allotment until he has 500 calories, he will still starve. The number of times you “upped” it is not relevant. You need to up it such that the issues are adequately addressed.

    Clearly, you have not reached that point.

    >> It’s alot of security.

    And yet somehow inadequate to control 12 year-olds, who according to some are shoplifting, trampling toddlers, knocking over seniors, vandalizing, and fighting. But security is powerless.

    Cracker jack staff, I’d say.

    >> No wonder you think adults hate teens out of hand. Here’s some information: Adults don’t hate teens. Adults hate teens who act ‘normal’ like you. Also, adults who act ‘normal’ like you, and if the elderly could get up to those kinds of shenanigans, they’d hate them as well.

    The previous paragraph is incoherent. I have no idea what you are trying to say.

    >> Over half of our weekend security guards were moonlighting sheriff’s deputies, so I’d hesitate before called them incompetent and dishonest.

    This troubles me even more. These are allegedly formal law enforcement who are incapable of controlling middle schoolers. If these people were deployed into the actual community as law enforcement, I’d be frightened. If you’re a burly officer deployed to safeguard life and limb and your intelligence and presence, plus the full force of law, do not provide you with the tools to influence a sixth grader, you should take up another profession.

    >> Regardless, there’s not much they can do to kids. They can call them over and make them sit in the office for awhile, if they cooperate. Legally, touching children is assault.

    You are admitting then that the children are not committing crimes (as has been erroneously portrayed and disingenuously inferred in other comments). You could not credibly assert that children who had committed crimes remain immune to law enforcement. That’s an absurd position.

    Therefore, it’s becoming clear that what is really at issue is that kids are behaving poorly while not violating any laws. Proponents of this ban work hard to infer a rampaging hoard of gangbangers and thieves and it’s becoming increasingly clear that what we are talking about are some rude kids.

    >> This policy has been in place for three years at my local mall. Still going strong.

    Unless your local mall is the one in question, my assertion stands. Done by Christmas. Book it. Or quietly amended to wink at the unaccompanied teens.

    Really, I’m sure some unaccompanied teens are already getting a pass. This is really just a profiling mechanism to allow the mall to target CERTAIN types of teens. I will go out on a limb and suggest that race and income level factor heavily into this filtration process.

    Well-dressed, white teen arrives alone. In he goes. Wink, wink. He’s one of the “good” ones and it will “probably be okay.”

    >> Also, I polled my nephew and his friends. They don’t care about this policy. They say that the mall is ‘nicer’ and ‘better’ since it’s been implemented. That’s only a small cross-section of local teens, but I found it interesting that they felt that way.

    This may come as a shock to you, but teens often tell adults precisely what they wish to hear mostly to avoid the brow-beating and finger-waving.

    If you want to believe that your nephew and their friends will give their true opinions on the matter to “Aunt Rose,” go ahead.

    1. You said: Are you affiliated with this Tri-County Mall?

      I already answered your question, in posts that you haven’t bothered to reply to.

      You said: And yet somehow inadequate to control 12 year-olds, who according to some are shoplifting, trampling toddlers, knocking over seniors, vandalizing, and fighting. But security is powerless.

      You are either stupid, or being deliberately obtuse. Either way, you’re not adequately making your case.

      I have never stated that senior citizens were knocked over, or that toddlers were trampled. Your lack of concern for anyone who isn’t actively going through puberty is revealing, however.

      As I have repeatedly stated, security guards can’t do anything to children. They can attempt to take children into custody, they can take adults into custody, they can eject adults, and they can call the police. Security guards are very useful, but they are limited by the law.

      Your refusal to respond to this fact is disingenuous, at best.

      Also, do you have any idea how much more it costs to hire off-duty law enforcement than it does to hire standard non-CLEET security? Your lack of empathy for the other people involved is startling. You insist that we should pay more and more and more so that these teens have a place to hang out? Really?

      Of course, if we actually did that, you’d be screaming ‘Nanny state!’ and parents would be complaining about not being able to enter the fence or take photos.

      You said: This troubles me even more. These are allegedly formal law enforcement who are incapable of controlling middle schoolers. If these people were deployed into the actual community as law enforcement, I’d be frightened. If you’re a burly officer deployed to safeguard life and limb and your intelligence and presence, plus the full force of law, do not provide you with the tools to influence a sixth grader, you should take up another profession.

      Once again, deliberately obtuse. Or maybe you really don’t understand the legal system at play here? An officer on duty has much more leeway than a security guard. Thus, a sheriff’s deputy moonlighting has the training and experience of a sheriff’s deputy, but the legal standing of a security guard.

      You said: You are admitting then that the children are not committing crimes… Therefore, it’s becoming clear that what is really at issue is that kids are behaving poorly while not violating any laws.

      I’m not ‘admitting’ anything. I’ve previously stated that they were not caught breaking laws, although vandalism and shoplifting were increased during this time. As I have previously stated, these people are behaving poorly. Some of these people can be ejected. Some cannot. The mall is refusing entrance to the people who cannot be ejected. It’s very simple.

      You said: Proponents of this ban work hard to infer a rampaging hoard of gangbangers and thieves and it’s becoming increasingly clear that what we are talking about are some rude kids.

      Once again, if you think the behavior that I outlined is merely ‘rude’, then you are the reason that these teens have a bad rap. You are a part of the small percentage that is ruining weekend adult-free shopping for your peers. Congrats!

      You said: This may come as a shock to you, but teens often tell adults precisely what they wish to hear mostly to avoid the brow-beating and finger-waving.

      This may come as a shock to you, but not all teens are lying vandals, as you seem to suggest that they are.

      Tell me, whose side are you on, exactly? And where is the solution that you claimed to have?

  142. >> People have asked for an alternate solution about a dozen times. Are you going to supply one, or what?

    I’ve given many suggestions. Are you asking me to sum them up in a more concise and easier to digest format? I have posted a lot. It would take a while to read.

  143. This is not fair because now the shopping malls won’t be getting alot of money because most teenagers are the ones who shop a lot and thats how alot of shops get the money. I guess goodbye tri county mall.This is very stupid for them to do that…WOWWW… wristbands doee? just for the mall? haha wow

  144. I hang out at Tri County Mall all the time, as a matter of fact, I was just there. Anyway, this policy is only in effect on two days of the week, and for a few hours at a time. And even during those times, I got in with a group where no one was over 18, and the guard didn’t even care…so yeah, things aren’t always as they seem…go Cincy

  145. malls are used a ‘daycare’ for adolescents because usa doesn’t have youth centers. ymca in many cities are non-existent due to bankruptcy. malls are often built on public land, from eminent domain, so even under age citizens have a right to be there. mallofamerica, etc can not hide behind the veil of private property. wake up american sheep.

  146. If malls are private property and can remove anyone they want, then it’s OK for them to target ethnic groups, racial groups, genders, political groups, or just anyone who dresses in a way they don’t like.

    Is that really OK with everyone here?

    Mall escort policies come from our society’s malice toward youth.

  147. I don’t really support this….especially for teens who live in a small town, like me, and have no where else to go. And teens bring in a lot of business to the stores, with buying clothes, food, and going to the movies. The mall is usually the only place to go for entertainment. Most likely they’re saying that they don’t want teens ruining the mall with what they do. My friends and I fully respect the regulations and rules of the mall, and we’re always on our best behavior. I’m just really furious because I’ve been going to the mall to see my friends for the past 3 years….but I guess I can’t do that anymore.

  148. A policy like this is a difficult thing to enact. While it is certainly true that many of the kids rolling in and out of the mall are not going to cause any trouble, whether they are buying or not, it is hard to determine. And many malls do not pursue a banning of teens on the weekends. Some malls do in fact just enforce mall policies on everyone. It is not singled out on the children. I am associated deeply with a mall, and I also remember being a kid. I did not have a local mall by any means, but I did have a teen center that was funded through fundraisers as well as donations. It is difficult to have this for many other places for many different reasons. I have seen groups of kids week in and week out be perfectly fine, doing what teens are suppose to do. I have also seen teens making messes, writing on walls, fighting, and smearing feces on the walls of restrooms. It is hard to dilute through the groups to get the good in and the bad out every time. I have also heard complaints from customers who refuse to shop anymore at the mall due to the disgusting, rude, outrageous behaviors of some. This is, on a smaller level, a argument that goes to the length of abortions, gay marriage, and welfare system reform. There is no right or wrong, only opinion. Give me solid evidence on either side of the argument – I will listen.

    Of course- the end all to the whole thing, like it or not is this:

    A Mall is Private Property – whether any outside funds go in to it. Private Property is allowed to make its own rules with in the legal standings. If these rules include no teens after a certain time, for any reason, then so be it. Whether they lose out on money or gain money, they have that right to choose.

    There is much bigger things to argue and worry about with teenagers then, ” why can’t they go to the mall?” I personally would think they would rather be doing something more creative.

    But that is just my opinion.

    Everyone have a good time doing what ever it is that they do.

  149. I can’t believe people keep bringing up how the mall has the right to enact it’s own policies. Sure it does. But judging people by group affiliation, rather than their individual characters, is almost uniformly wrong whether illegal or not. Surely that’s not so hard to understand?

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