To impose a curfew on people aged 18 and under, as City Councilor James Kelly, of South Boston, is talking about, is not only a ridiculous idea in itself, but it violates a person’s fundamental rights.

It makes even less sense that Kelly is thinking of proposing this at a time when Boston is not in a time of crisis, as New Orleans is, and when crime levels are not at high levels like they were in the early 1990s.

Crimes are not common throughout all of Boston, but only in specific areas. To think of forcing people 18 and under to be home by 9 p.m. every night, Kelly is including the overwhelming majority of young people who are not out to make trouble.

Does Councilor Kelly really think that because people are 18 or under, they are more likely to commit crimes than older people? Is he aware that his logic behind imposing a curfew is both ridiculous and unconstitutional? Or is Councilor-At-Large Stephen Murphy’s negative attitude toward young people rubbing off on other councilors at City Hall?

We may never know, but if there is no contagious anti-student disease circulating through the air vents at City Hall, Kelly has no reason to propose such a measure, which would also target 18-year-old college students.

Would 18-year-old freshmen be required to confine themselves to their cramped dorms, and make sure to get home from the library by 9 p.m. in order not to be confronted by a police department curfew-enforcing task force?

The Boston Police Department has even acknowledged that such a law would be almost impossible to enforce, and that it “would put more of a burden on the police department to respond to any kind of an incident.”

The department already has a task force of 40 plain-clothes officers who work specifically to counteract youth crimes, and they are sent out to specific neighborhoods where gang crimes are known to occur.

City Councilor Chuck Turner, representing Roxbury and Dorchester, where police statistics have shown that crimes levels are higher than in other neighborhoods, is against Kelly’s idea, and said recently that he thinks “it would be very difficult to enforce and an attempt by a police officer to enforce it could create more problems.”

Turner is right, and Kelly should think about the actual implications this bill would have, perhaps by getting home at 9 one night and sleeping on it.