This year’s back-to-school season has thrown up an interesting trend, one we like to call Security Wear (SW). With so little money to be made out of normal school uniforms, companies are now trying to cash in on parents’ and students’ fears by looking to provide SW products as part of their back-to-school campaigns.
One school uniform supplier Trutex highlighted their own research in a press release that said a large proportion of parents and students would be interested in buying uniforms with some form of tracking device built in. As a PR tactic this was hugely successful with coverage by every major newspaper and TV station. Online the list of articles, blogs and other links seems endless. Whether embedded tracking devices like this would work technically is another issue. Given that ankle tagging of criminals hasn’t been very successful, how Trutex think they can produce a low cost product that can survive not just the wear and tear of students but washing and drying was not disclosed.
In the US, parents can even buy bullet proof backpacks. MJ Safety Solutions now sell the MyChild backpack, which they describe as ‘affordable and practical ballistic protection from gun and knife crime’. MyChild £90 backpacks all contain a ballistic panel which weighs 570g, about the weight of a small bottle of water. While this might not seem much, when you add a full load of books this means that parents’ desire for their child to be protected from a shooting incident (statistically unlikely, even in the US) overrides the much higher risk of spinal damage caused by carrying too much weight (as independent studies in the US, Australia, Italy have shown). While MyChild products are rated to the US NIJ Level II Protection standards (able to stop a standard 9mm FMJ handgun bullet) they only work if the student gets shot in the backpack!
Finally, parents can also opt to buy their progeny a stab resistant hoodie from Romford-based Bladerunner. Depending on the version, these cost between £20-150, but don’t come with school crests or logos. Crime is a problem, both inside and outside schools and while it may be preying on parental paranoia, there looks to be a serious market for SW.
www.brhoodie.com
www.mychildspack.com
www.trutex.com
