Anti-Social Pop

November 2010 » A report (summary) published in September by the UK's police watchdog, Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary, highlighted the damage being caused to society by anti-social behaviour. Unsurprisingly, in the large survey carried out for the report, public drunkenness, rowdy loitering and vandalism were top of the list of behaviour types experienced by respondents.

Although the role played by pop 'music' was not implicitly mentioned in any media account of the report (even more unsurprisingly), it was nevertheless self-evident: 21% of survey informants cited "noise/loud music" as their chief concern, 23% reported "rowdy or inconsiderate behaviour", and a further 10% "nuisance neighbours". Admittedly, not all of these instances will involve pop 'music', but anyone who has ever had neighbours knows how extensive the part played by intrusive hifi systems in such statistics is.

Most tellingly, however, a whopping 36% said that anti-social behaviour impacted either "a great deal" or "a fair amount" on their daily routine, and 16% reported they had called the police more than ten times in the last year.

Historically, many types of anti-social behaviour have been given low priority by government, police and court alike, at least in Western Europe and North America. The idea of 'personal freedom', as illusory as it generally is, widely includes the right to be annoying, boisterous, degenerate, cantankerous, smelly, dissolute etc., with little regard to the people who must occupy adjacent living spaces.

The harm considered to accrue to anyone forced to listen to their neighbour's hifi or TV through a dividing wall or floor has rated merely as 'nuisance' - apparently an irrelevance next to physical assault, for example, or burglary.

Yet the HMIC concedes that the public generally make no distinction between 'anti-social behaviour' and 'crime'; both lie on a "sliding scale of grief". Could it be that, in the UK at least, the police are finally waking up to the fact that anti-social behaviour is a precursor to serious crime - something to which anyone who, after months or years of suffering, has ever dreamed of throttling their next-door neighbour and taking a sledgehammer to their TV or hifi equipment will testify?

Giving police the power and resources to stop individuals, groups and businesses who blight the daily lives of others with their loud music is a key step towards a fairer society, but it goes without saying that anti-social behaviour is more than simply a problem for police forces to deal with. National and local governments, community organisations and families themselves all have an important role to play.

Above all, society must start taking the question of noise pollution far more seriously. This will prove almost impossibly difficult in a world stuck in a mindless consumer frenzy where noise is omnipresent - from the constant roar of traffic outside to the seemingly inescapable thump-thumping, whining-crooning-barking and repetitious crassness of pop radio in so many business premises, private vehicles and neighbourhood homes.

At the very least, individuals must let their elected representatives know how strongly they feel about noise pollution; they must tell businesses they'll remove their custom if they don't turn off the pop; and they must set a good example by respecting the rights of other citizens to enjoy their homes peacefully.

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