A while back I (like many others) was quite interested to hear that CCTV camera’s were not useful in solving crimes. But at the time, I had some people say to me that while they may not be great, they made people feel more secure. This post from the Adam Smith Institute seems to undercut that argument:
the rapid spread of CCTV cameras has gone hand in hand with a massive increase in crime, particularly violent crime. People demand CCTV because it makes them feel safer. Unfortunately it doesn’t actually make them safer. All it does is subject them to snooping and abuse. Local councils had to be told to cut back their snooping on people they suspected of leaving their wheelie-bin lids open, or letting their dogs foul the pavement. Other officials have used cameras to ogle female airport passengers. Given the number of people with access to CCTV images, it can’t be long before we find people being blackmailed over them, as has happened in the US. Maybe it’s already happened here too.
While CCTV images may give officials a thrill, the Met study confirms that they are utterly useless in prosecuting cases. Often, the images are not clear enough to make an identification that would stand up beyond reasonable doubt. More often still, the images are not securely stored – so the courts throw them out, on the grounds that they might have been tampered with.
Hat tip to Conor for the link
Pidge | 20-Sep-09 at 11:35 pm | Permalink
1. Again, the article falls into the trap of assuming that CCTV cameras are installed in order to aid public prosecutions. That might be the case in the UK, where they tend to be put up by police, but in Ireland, most CCTV is privately erected in shops etc. There, the purpose isn’t to successfully prosecute (although it helps – I know of three successful prosecutions in 2009 alone in Blackrock based on security camera footage from a chipper there. The ASI article is being far too general in simply writing CCTV off as being universally inadmissable.) Anyway, the purpose of CCTV is more of a deterrent than anything else, providing a witness (or, at least, the threat of an immutable witness) to any attempted robberies etc.
2. Arguments against councils using CCTV to investigate minor offences such as littering, bin use, dog doings etc don’t work as arguments against CCTV in general. If you have a problem with frivolous monitoring, then argue against that – but don’t use such an argument against CCTV in shops, banks etc, which are placed to lower insurance costs, protect staff, and deter crime.
3. The fact that some “officials” (don’t you just love the ASI’s instant implied mistrust of anyone employed in the public sector) have misused security camera footage is an argument for greater supervision and controls. This is exactly the same type of issue as body searches in airports – it’s open to messing, but is fairly easily overcome.
4. The fact (?) that violent crime has increased on previous levels tells us feck all about how effective security cameras are. Violent crime levels could rise 10% with security cameras, but could have risen 20% without them. Arguing on specific issues from general statistics is a bad idea.
The UK certainly seem to have gone overboard, in the sense that they appear to have saturated the public domain with cameras. That hasn’t happened in Ireland (by and large), and it’d be a pity if the reasonable uses of security cameras were held back by the unreasonable.
John | 21-Sep-09 at 8:07 pm | Permalink
Michael, I’d actually agree with you on the weaknesses of the article in terms of applying it to Ireland. And I actually don’t mind CCTV being used in shops as a deterrent, my issue really is in terms of the UK ‘surveillance society’ of which the CCTV cameras are actually the most obvious example of…