As rain pelted Philadelphia on a recent July evening, 24 young people kept dry and busy playing pool and video games. Since it was “police engagement night” at the Community Evening Resource Center, they were also chatting with officers, who capped the night by serving scoops of fruit-flavored water ice.

The kids, ages 10 to 17, were at the center in Germantown. It’s a place where some voluntarily show up seven nights a week to do arts and crafts, STEM projects, learn about music and video production, conflict resolution and self care, and eat dinner. At or around the stroke of 9pm, they receive rides home.

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Dameia Day, 13, said she comes to paint, make friends, and attend therapeutic classes, which she believes improved her self-confidence. “It helps with social anxiety. I used to have a shell,” she says. “But a lot has happened over the last two years since I started coming here. I found my friend group, my clique.”

Zyhaire Johnson, 16, says he’s told four friends about the center, selling them on the fact that it’s a safe place to have fun. “My main priority is to keep my friends safe,” he says. “I’m over-protective.”

The Germantown spot is one of Philadelphia’s six evening resource centers, the continuation of a pandemic-era solution: The City opened the first three in December 2021, at the height of Philadelphia’s gun violence crisis. The centers are also intended to help the city enforce its minor curfew law, which requires people 13 and under to be home from 9:30pm to 6am, and those 14 through 17 to be home from 10pm. to 6am. When officers find juveniles in violation of the curfew, they’re instructed to bring them to the evening resource centers if they can’t successfully take them home.

While many cities and communities have curfew laws, a growing body of research has found that curfews do little to reduce serious crime, and may in fact contribute to it by removing potential witnesses from the streets while heightening tensions between teens and police.

In Philadelphia, though, Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel said he believes curfews can help curb crime, despite the lack of research confirming his belief. “It takes a lot of analysis to find the ‘why,’” he said. “We know that we have a strategy of prevention, intervention and enforcement that we all are collectively working on.” He went on to praise the centers, saying they’re “working and thriving to keep a lot of our young people off the streets.”

But questions remain as to whether police are diverting enough young people to the centers, and whether there’s enough awareness to get children and teens to seek them out on their own — especially as Philadelphia addresses a rise in violence committed by young people.

“You don’t have to be in the streets, you don’t have to be angry or bitter. Yes, sometimes life hands us a deck of cards that we didn’t ask for. But it’s how we shuffle them.” — Daisy Goins, Development of African American Youth director.

An exclusive look at Department of Human Services data shows that since the centers first opened in 2021, about 2,700 youth have visited more than 56,000 times. Just a small fraction of those youth — 219 — were brought to centers by police, according to Police Department data. At the same time, officers are stopping more youth in violation of curfew; starting in fiscal year 2022, that number increased from 1,088, to 2,438, to 2,499 last year. Slightly more juveniles were arrested for gun possession each calendar year, up to 125 in 2024 from 92 in 2021.

Officials from the City and the nonprofit organizations hired to run the centers said that while they’re helping to keep a growing number of young people off the streets and safe, too many youth remain in perilous environments, at risk of becoming enmeshed in gun violence. More needs to be done, they say, to promote the centers.

“We send the information (about the centers) to teachers, to all the community-based organizations we have. We send it out through our e-newsletter, we send it out via postal mail, as well,” says City Councilmember Katherine Gilmore Richardson, who sponsored the legislation that created the centers. “That’s how the City will continue to make a difference for young people who need a lot of help.”

‘Violence can pop off anywhere’

At their inception, the goal of the centers was to help curb after-hours crime by giving young people safe places to congregate with adult supervision. To do that, the City has paid nonprofit organizations $750,000 a year to run each center, with one in each Philadelphia Police Department division. In addition to the curfew centers, the City operates more than 155 rec centers from the morning until 9 or 10pm. The curfew centers provide educational enrichment and recreational activities from 7 to 9pm. Since their launch, two divergent storylines have emerged regarding Philadelphia young people and gun violence. While fewer have been shot, more have been arrested for doing the shooting.

“We better invest in young people if we do not want to see them coming back … to do longer sentences in jail and do more and more harm,” says Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, who commends the centers. “We’re seeing some numbers that are encouraging despite the fact that we’re also seeing terrible, tragic incidents.”

Some of the latest young Philadelphians to fall victim to gun violence were shot just after 4 p.m. on July 30, at a place where safety is expected: a City rec center swimming pool on the first day it opened this summer. Police said a shooter accompanied by three other males opened fire and wounded four youths and an adult male employee of the Christy Rec Center in West Philadelphia.

Officials from the city and the nonprofit organizations hired to run the centers said that while they’re helping to keep a growing number of young people off the streets and safe, too many youth remain in perilous environments, at risk of becoming enmeshed in gun violence.

“To do it right here, where you know young people are engaged in activities that are supposed to be safe and fun for the entire family, that means that you have no regard for human life,” says Mayor Cherelle Parker. “You have no regard for our young people.”

Jeanine Glasgow, director of the Germantown CERC, says her children repeatedly identified rec centers as places they don’t feel safe because of gun violence. “I don’t want to say that the CERC center is safer than a rec center, because violence can pop off anywhere,” she said in an interview before the pool shooting. “But they’ve had friends that have been affected by gun violence and family members who have been jumped or shot outside a rec center.”

‘There’s no reason we shouldn’t be busting at the seams’

The curfew center in North Philadelphia, run by the nonprofit Institute for the Development of African American Youth, is a place where young people have been “knocking the door down to have a safe place to go, to get a warm meal, to come off the street,” says its director, Daisy Goins.

But the space in the heart of Temple University’s sprawling urban campus has room for more. “There’s no reason we shouldn’t be busting at the seams because there’s a place to give them love, there’s a place to teach them,” she says.

Goins says she’d tell youth who don’t know about her center: “You don’t have to be in the streets, you don’t have to be angry or bitter. Yes, sometimes life hands us a deck of cards that we didn’t ask for. But it’s how we shuffle them.”

Latisha McClary, 51, a case manager who has worked at the center for four years, says it competes with a turbulent community for the attention of its children. “We try to keep the young minds off of the corners and give them positive situations,” she says. “This is essential for this type of community because, unfortunately, we have one of the highest crime rates, and that negatively impacts this community.”

Angenique Howard, director of the Northeast CERC in Frankford, says the center has become a magnet for children that’s helped to cool down a once crime-hot block.

“There used to be at least two shootings a week on the corner out front, at Leiper and Arrott Streets. At one time, shooting actually came into our parking lot,” recalls Howard, who founded Unique Dreams, the six-year-old community nonprofit that manages the center. “It’s been reported that in the last two years, gun violence has definitely decreased. I’m not giving all the credit to CERCs, but I think the CERCs have a lot to do with it.”

While many cities and communities have curfew laws, a growing body of research has found that curfews do little to reduce serious crime, and may in fact contribute to it by removing potential witnesses from the streets while heightening tensions between teens and police.

Howard’s center drew the most young people, 328, and the most youth visits, 6,952, during fiscal year 2025, which ended June 30. Children, Howard said, are drawn by sports and music, but also by workshops on resume writing, hygiene, conflict resolution, building healthy relationships, and preventing bullying.

“The moment we opened up the doors, they just started coming,” says Howard, who estimates that 35 to 40 children show up on an average weeknight. “It’s almost like they were waiting for an outlet.”

Sahara Afif, 16, Howard’s niece, says the center has grown on her as it has grown. “I’ve been here from the start. I watched it go from one kid to a lot of kids. I’ve watched her change the community. I’ve watched kids bring their brothers, sisters, nephews, cousins here and change each other,” she says. “This gets them off the street and keeps them from doing bad stuff. It’s a good program for all interests. Anything you want to try, you can just ask, and she’ll make it happen.”

‘Curfew kids’

Richardson says that, while she’s not surprised so few curfew violators end up in the evening centers — because of the Police Department policy to first try to take them home — she wouldn’t mind seeing cops bringing more youth.

“I would love it if they would take all the children to the CERCs and not take them home,” she says, “because I think that just helps parents to understand the importance of ensuring that our young people are in safe spaces.”

The Germantown CERC has taken in the most curfew violators, more than 100, since the program began, according to City data. Glasgow, executive director of the nonprofit Juvenile Justice Center of Philadelphia, which operates the evening center, believes that’s the result of the close relationship she and her staff built with officers in surrounding police districts.

“The key to us getting these curfew kids in is the invitation that we sent out for the districts,” says Glasgow. “We sat around a big table, we had lunch, and we talked about what our mission was, why we needed their (officers’) buy-in because it’s really a resource to them as well as the young people.”

In Philadelphia, though, Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel said he believes curfews can help curb crime, despite the lack of research confirming his belief. “It takes a lot of analysis to find the ‘why,’” he said. “We know that we have a strategy of prevention, intervention and enforcement that we all are collectively working on.”

Officers from three police districts have their own nights at the center each month, she says. One gives haircuts, another cooks with the kids, another brings DJ equipment to use during dance competitions, and another started a donation closet with clothing and shoes. The officers and the children have even done mock traffic stops in the parking lot. “The kids learned how to stay calm, and they got a lot out of that,” Glasgow says.

Sergeant Dawn Thomas, a 22-year PPD veteran, says that, after her first visit, she signed on. “I was just amazed at all the things they have to offer,” she says.

Thomas volunteers once or twice a month, and sometimes brings her son. “I’ve seen kids come in here who said they were forced to come here,” she says. “Then weeks would go by and they’re still coming because they like it.”

Such was the case on this recent night. “I was like, ‘When are the kids coming?’ A co-worker said to me, ‘Jeanine, whether you have one kid or 45, you know that that one child or those 45 were not a victim or a perpetrator of crime,’” she says.

She looks around the center and says: “We know right now, 24 of them are downstairs and they’re not on the street getting into trouble or being a victim of a crime. So that’s a win-win all the way around.”

Mensah Dean is a staff writer at The Trace. Previously he was a staff writer on the Justice & Injustice team at The Philadelphia Inquirer, where he focused on gun violence, corruption and wrongdoing in the public and private sectors for five years. Mensah also covered criminal courts, public schools and city government for the Philadelphia Daily News.

Every Voice, Every Vote funds Philadelphia media and community organizations to expand access to civic news and information. The coalition is led by The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. Lead support for Every Voice, Every Vote in 2024 and 2025 is provided by the William Penn Foundation with additional funding from The Lenfest Institute for Journalism, Comcast NBC Universal, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Henry L. Kimelman Family Foundation, Judy and Peter Leone, Arctos Foundation, Wyncote Foundation, 25th Century Foundation, and Dolfinger-McMahon Foundation.

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