‘Hanging out and sleeping on the ground’: Acoustic environments, rationality, and the minimal account of permissible means of crime prevention

Altering acoustic environments to prevent crime is a strategy employed by municipalities, police departments, and other state actors around the world. Most often such means are used to dispel groups of loitering youth and/or to discourage the homeless from rough sleeping in public locations. Examples of these measures include inter alia the playing of classical music in subways, opera at train stations, Barry Manilow songs in car parks, and “Baby Shark” and other children’s songs in the vicinity of high-end venues. It also includes using the so-called “Mosquito” devices—devices that emit an unpleasant high-frequency sound which is only audible to those under the age of 25—to keep youngsters away from parks and recreation centres at night. One moral objection that has been raised to the idea of employing such sound-based measures to prevent teen loitering or rough sleeping is that they fail to treat their targets as befits rational agents. This chapter argues that three variations of this objection all fail. However, it is then argued that any means of crime prevention must meet at least two conditions for its use to be morally permissible, and that sound-based measures to prevent teen loitering and rough sleeping often fail to meet both of these conditions.