The Agency Objection to Preventive Exclusion from Public Spaces

Abstract

One way to seek to reduce the risk of potential offenders engaging in certain types of crime in a public or semi-public area is to make it much more difficult, or even impossible, for them to gain access to the area in question and subject them to a sanction if they do enter the area. This paper considers whether preventive exclusion of this kind should be considered a pro tanto morally impermissible means of crime prevention because it violates the agency of those excluded. Several variants of this agency objection to preventive exclusion are identified and critically assessed. It is argued that none persuasively show preventive exclusion to be pro tanto morally wrong.