The Arundel Mills shopping mall located south of Baltimore has run into more than its fair share of trouble this year, frequently involving misbehaving or even criminal teenagers. Security services at the mall report that they have responded to 19 reports of assault, six robberies, eight disorderly conduct calls, and 18 thefts involving underage suspects just in 2024. Customers have been complaining and foot traffic is down significantly, particularly on weekends when most of these incidents take place. Now the mall is preparing to take action with a new policy aimed at curbing crime by unsupervised minors. Starting in a few weeks they will introduce a new "Youth Supervision Policy." On Fridays and Saturdays, anyone under the age of 18 will have to leave and stay out of the mall after 3 p.m. unless they are accompanied by an adult at least 21 years of age. ID will be required to enforce the new rules. But will this work? (CBS News)

Arundel Mills is stopping unsupervised minors from entering the mall during certain hours during the weekend.

Starting on September 6, everyone under 18 years old must be accompanied by an adult older than 21 after 3 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.

Simon Property Group, which owns Arundel Mills, says that unsupervised minors must leave the property by 3 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, and those who do not abide by the shopping center's Youth Supervision Policy will be asked to leave.

In general terms, I'm not opposed to this sort of restriction at all. In previous decades, shopping malls became places for teenagers to hang out in the evenings and on weekends. Most malls include a movie theater, so that could give them something to do without needing to spend a ton of money. But then again, we didn't have nearly as many out-of-control teenagers running around committing actual crimes in those days. Now we do. And in this case, we're talking about Baltimore where the street gangs begin recruiting new members as young as 12 or 13. 

So it's not that this is a bad idea or harmful in any serious way. Arundel Mills is free to put such a rule in place. In fact, several other malls in the area have already enacted similar restrictions, including the Towson Town Center and the AVENUE at White Marsh. But putting a rule in place is different than being able to fairly enforce it and do so without causing undo disruptions to legitimate adult shoppers. The way Arundel Mills is structuring the rules could present significant challenges.

One of the first questions to address is what to do about younger employees who work at the shops there but are not yet 18. They seem to have that part of it figured out as well as they can. Such workers will be allowed to remain in their employer's shop and continue working after the 3 p.m. curfew, but once their shift ends they will have to leave immediately. That seems like a rather harsh way to treat your workers.

Then there is the question of age verification. It would be a fool's errand to believe that everyone under the age of 18 (at what is typically a very rebellious age) will simply walk out of the mall voluntarily when the clock strikes 3. So security will need to start carding people. That's fine for those who are actually 17 and under, but this is a visual identification system that has proven to be wildly prone to errors. There are high school senior males out there who can already grow a decent 5 o'clock shadow and are fairly tall. Similarly, there are young ladies who have the natural features and the resources to afford good cosmetics and fashion who can pass themselves off as young adult women with shocking ease. On the other end of the scale, many young adults may continue looking like teenagers well into their twenties. When asked, they should be able to produce ID to back up their complaints easily enough, but they will eventually tire of being asked. Also, the 21-year-olds responsible for the teens will similarly have to produce ID to verify their claims, offering the same challenges to the security staff.

And what about enforcement if someone is under 18 or refuses to show ID and cooperate? The mall's guidelines say that they "will be asked to leave." Fair enough, but you technically already asked them to leave when you posted the new policy. And who will be doing the asking? I assume it would be the security guards, but what if the kid flatly refuses? Dragging children out of the mall by their arms and legs for the crime of not being 18 isn't a very good public relations look.

As I said, I'm in favor of a policy such as this in principle. Juvenile crime is a very real problem and the police, particularly in the Baltimore area, have been unable to wrestle the worst of it to the ground, to say nothing of a bunch of mall rats. But implementation will be challenging and the success of the policy will unfortunately rely heavily on voluntary cooperation. Particularly for young, aspiring gang members, voluntary cooperation likely isn't their strong suit.