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  • 2018-10-11 (xsd:date)
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  • Does a Municipal Code Limit Trick-or-Treating to Children 12 and Younger? (en)
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  • One of the common elements of the Halloween night trick-or-treat tradition is adults' grumbling that some of the kids coming to their houses seeking candy are too big or too old for such an activity. Although there are no universal rules about who may engage in trick-or-treating -- and some people feel everyone should be free to participate, including adults of all ages -- general consensus seems to be that kids should be looking to enjoy Halloween activities other than collecting candy door-to-door once they reach middle or high school age. As Halloween approached in 2018, many social media users began sharing (and questioning) what appeared to be a municipal ordinance for Chesapeake, Virginia, which limited trick-or-treat activities by law to children aged 12 and under: This image does reproduce a section of Chesapeake's code of ordinances (enacted in 1970), which not only sets a maximum age for trick-or-treaters (12), but also establishes an end time for that activity on Halloween night (8:00 PM): Chesapeake is not unique in having such an ordinance, but these types of laws are not generally intended to require children to carry ID with them and subject them to arrest if they're a little overage or stay out a few minutes late on Halloween night. Often these kinds of regulations have been on the books (largely unenforced) for decades, and were initially passed to address particular ancillary problems, such as older kids' harassing and taking candy from smaller children, or strangers' using the occasion to lure children into their cars. As the Virginian-Pilot reported in 2015, a similar law still in effect in Hampton Roads stemmed from incidents that had taken place one Halloween night nearly fifty years earlier: For the most part, such laws merely serve to provide a basis for police to intervene when necessary before a given situation gets out of control. The Virginian-Pilot article noted that Halloween trick-or-treating regulations in surrounding areas were seldom enforced to the point of anyone's actually being charged with violating the law: Indeed, the City of Chesapeake's website proclaims that the goal of the rules is to ensure Halloween evening is safe for everyone, not for police to be actively seeking out violations of the time or age limits: (en)
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