The UK has the world’s highest density of CCTVs, which are mainly used as tools to fight crime. But now an “international research network” called The Campbell Collabaration claims the 4.2 million cameras installed in that country almost have no effect. A pattern seems to slowly emerge.
In collaboration with the British government, the organization summarized and analyzed a total of 44 different studies related to the topic, which were released in the last years (mostly in the UK) and are said to be scientifically relevant and valid. The report in full can be found here [PDF].
The result: CCTVs only have a slight effect as far as lowering the overall crime rate is concerned. As far as violent crimes go, the cameras even have no effect whatsoever. The report says CCTVs can only be labeled effective when used in car parks (where they lower the crime rate by about 50% in average).
The Campbell Collabaration also says that CCTVs installed in the UK are more effective in fighting crime than those used in other countries. For some reason, the organization recommends to keep using the cameras, but with a much narrower focus, i.e. to reduce vehicle crime.
Interestingly, the paper focuses mainly on the effect of cameras on reducing the number of crimes. There is a brief mention of the fact that live monitoring meant that the police are able to record crime numbers more effectively, and that they are able to get officers to the scene of a crime more quickly and thus reduce the number of serious injuries resulting from violent crimes.
There is no discussion in the paper, however, of how the use of cameras affects clear-up and conviction rates. Are the police more able to make arrests and obtain convictions as a result of cameras?
Good points. One might also note that another benefit of cameras is being able to catch the people committing the crimes, either by having the police on the scene earlier and having pictures of the perpetrators. I’m not a huge fan of covering the planet in CCTVs, but I think it’s important to understand the truth about their effect on both crime rates and arrest/conviction rates in order to assess where they might be worth having and where they might not.
Knowing the current UK government, they will take this report as justification to increase the number of CCTVs, but stealth them into ordinary objects so that the citizens (read: prisoners) can’t detect them. That is the fundamental building block of the Panopticon, after all.
Coming all too soon to the US of A.