About the catch-all legal concept of "disorderly conduct", we have often had mixed feelings about it. But over time, I have come to realize that it does serve as a necessary and proper, albeit nuanced, tool as crowd control as well as a substitute that allows us to ultimately jettison from the books all "status offenses" and all of what the late, great Peter McWilliams called "consensual crimes" aka victimless crimes. (Sorry not sorry, James Q. Wilson.)
One tool to replace them all, basically. And additionally, we need to get tough on REAL crime, of course. Common sense, basically.
Loitering, curfew, "underage" drinking or smoking, drunk but NOT disorderly, simple drug possession, vagrancy, and so many other things could easily be made redundant and removed from the law books. Of course, once these things become littering, trespassing, vandalism, DUI, harassment, assault, or disturbing the peace, etc. THEN they would become and remain illegal.
When dealing with large and unruly crowds, of course, it's not always so simple or cut and dried, and in the moment, the concept of "disorderly conduct" sometimes needs to be invoked to restore order. And all states have some flavor of this.
We believe that disorderly conduct should be 1) defined broadly enough to be fit for purpose, but not too broad, 2) be a mere violation/infraction for at least the first or even the first two offenses, albeit briefly arrestable for practical purposes, and 3) applied in a non-discriminatory manner, whether by race, gender, class, ability, orientation, etc., and especially age.
There are of course whole towns on the Jersey Shore right now who have youth curfews in part because New Jersey's juvenile injustice reform went too far in that regard, with the police having to follow such restrictive protocols in practice.
The gist of this whole issue being, collective punishment (to youth or anyone else) is inherently and irredeemably evil and needs to end yesterday. And if the admittedly imperfect concept of "disorderly conduct" needs to remain on the books to prevent resorting to collective punishment, so be it.
For example, New Jersey in fact already has a fairly decent law on the books right now. (Just apply it to all ages, basically.) So there should be no excuse to resort to youth curfews or anything else.
