Digga D, otherwise known as Rhys Herbert, was officially announced the first musician who would be given a Criminal Behaviour Order (CBO) that would impact the output of their music. So after watching the documentary on how the CBO has impacted his life and the way in which he produces music I have decided to provide a short summary and a few opinions.

• Originally a CBO was designed to tackle the most serious and persistent anti-social activity
• CBO’s can be given for a number of offenses such as threatening violence towards members within the community
• They can enforce a prohibition however, this prohibition must not interfere with the timings of school or work.

The CBO prohibits Digga D from mentioning various words that are associated with violence that can be linked to criminal activity such as gangs and weapons. In an attempt to try and reduce the violent crimes seen happening in London amongst young people, the law has intervened and tried to ensure that the music that is inspiring other young people who also live in disadvantaged environments are not influenced by the wrong factors.

Immediately, I can see that by censoring the type of music someone outputs you start to see questions emerge such as “what is the point of freedom of speech?”

If I address the “meaning of freedom of speech”, I would have to argue that the CBO put in place directly contradicts this idea that we are all free to speak our minds. However, I do understand that any action out there that could slow down the knife crime exerted in certain areas of London would be a positive outcome of the CBO. Therefore, if a CBO is put in place on one individual whilst other drill artists profit from talking about the same “prohibited topics” it seems counter productive. Therefore, it the purpose of this specific CBO is to control crime exerted by young people I would personally suggests that censorship of violent music on Youtube or other public media platforms should be prohibited full stop. Thus, the moment you allow exceptions you fail to uphold the law or the policy you put in place because there are so many exceptions you may as well as just modify the law.

Therefore, I propose complete modification or the introduction of legislation that prohibits any violent genre of music being put into the public’s reach or the removal of a CBO that I believe cannot be effective when the competition are making the same violent music that the government and other bodies who can enforce the law are trying to reduce.