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Crime is everywhere and everyone knows it. You can’t turn on the television without catching a newscaster reporting on the most recent local crime spree, seeing an advertisement for one of the many popular television series revolving around crime, or seeing a commercial for the latest home protection system. In an effort to slow the current rate of high crime, police are trying out new deterrents, desperate to find a solution to the alarming rise in law-breaking.
In Oregon police are centering on preventing the type of crime that occurs when offenders are loitering for extended amounts of time in public areas. Their newest weapon in this endeavor is rather unexpected: classical music. This deterrent has been used in other cities and experienced some success, and Oregon law enforcement decided to try it out at transit stops, where crime frequently occurs. Police believe that the associations the younger generation has with classical music–perceiving it as boring, old-fashioned, and high-minded–will keep them away from areas where it is constantly playing.
Law enforcement is unsure whether this new program will be successful enough to last, leading them to experiment with other strategies. New techniques that are coming out include lights that come on simultaneously with alarm systems with such intensity that they can blind the perpetrator or even cause them to have a seizure. These lights have already hit the market in Japan. The Gunshot Detection System is the latest in technological crime prevention in the United States: it has the ability to analyze the qualities of a sound, determine if it is gunfire, locate the origin, and notify local authorities.
