Call to ban wearing of hoods in shopping centres
Youths should be made to take off their hoods in shopping centres to cut shoplifting and prevent intimidation in the run-up to Christmas, it was demanded today.
Former Fine Gael leader Michael Noonan said many of his constituents in Limerick felt threatened by people in hoods going around shops.
“Most shoplifting, according to the gardaí, in shopping centres and shopping malls is now being underaken by persons wearing hoods, usually young people, both male and female.
“The security systems, which are dependent largely on cameras, are ineffective in identifying persons who shoplift wearing hoods,” Mr Noonan said.
He said shop owners and management should have the discretion to prevent the wearing of hoods on their premises, by reserving the right of admission, just as bars or restaurants exercised dress codes.
“There’s no problem about wearing them on the street – with the inclement weather we have one would wear a hood, one would wear a hood to a match.
“But when you’re walking around your local shopping centre or walking through the local supermarket or inside a boutique, there’s no necessity at all for wearing a hood.
“I’m not asking for people to be required to remove their jackets – all they have to do is take their hood off,” he said.
He said one shopping centre in Limerick had trialled the move for the past few weeks and was very happy with the result, which had seen the number of shoplifting incidents fall.
A similar move in the UK – in which the country’s biggest shopping centre, Bluewater in Kent, banned the wearing of hoodies – received the backing of Prime Minister Tony Blair and Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott.
The ban was brought in following complaints about loitering youths and in the weekend after it was introduced, the mall said it saw a 22.6% increase in shoppers on the same period the year before.
But Fianna Fáil deputy John Curran said an outright ban on hooded tops could label young people in an inappropriate way.
“First and foremost, I think if you look at the profile of the people wearing them, it’s very common amongst young people to wear this type of garment.
“I think in many ways by turning around and saying to ban the hoody it’s categorising an awful lot of young people in a way that I feel is inappropriate, because the vast majority of these young people aren’t involved in anything like this,” the Dublin Mid-West TD said.
But he said: “Rather than the banning of the garment as such, I don’t have a problem with people indoors being asked not to have their hood up in the same way as you would do with a motorcycle helmet.”
