Teen Deterrent

The campaign to have the Mosquito 'teen deterrent' banned has received another boost with the intervention of England's Children’s Commissioner, Al Aynsley-Green, who has launched a campaign calling for businesses to abandon the use of such devices.

While we are all in sympathy with the shopkeeper who feels threatened by gangs of 'hoodies' outside his business, it is unfair to target everyone with a hearing-range under 20,000Hz, law-abiding or not. Putting aside the fact that the freedom to assemble on public property is a civil liberty dating back centuries, there have been no studies on how long-term exposure to the high-pitched whine can affect one's hearing and there are worries especially with regard to young children.

Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti has said, 'This device could affect a babe in arms as well as a teenager. Imagine such a device applied to people of one race or gender and ask what position they would take,' and she has a very good point. This 'degrading and indiscriminate' weapon has the effect of victimising the vast majority of law-abiding teenagers and is not the right approach to tackling 'anti-social behaviour.'

What the Mosquito device does, as well as causing great annoyance to all who can hear it, is it moves people from outside of a shop to somewhere else where they are equally likely to do something untoward. What it fails to do is to address the key question; why do young people feel the need to hang around outside Spar on a Friday night?

One reason is simple. In many areas the provisions for young people are appalling or non-existent. For those young people between the age when one is happy to hang around in a friend's house and the age when one can gain entry to a bar there is very little else to do. It is therefore inevitable that they choose to wander the streets and can sometimes, without being aware of it, prove to be a threatening presence to older people. If given an alternative I bet many would take it; anything is better craic than Spar.