Sponsored by
Big Brother is watching us... but nobody knows if he's winning the war on crime
It began as an isolated outbreak. A few years later, it had turned into a rash. By 2006, Britain had a CCTV cameras epidemic. Despite no proof of their effectiveness, the technology was universally embraced and new control rooms quickly became a hub of local policing.
To date, the scheme has cost more than 500m. The public is now watched by an estimated 4.2 million cameras – 10 per cent of the world's total, yet concrete evidence of their success remains as elusive as ever.
"It began in 1985 when a CCTV camera was installed on the seafront at Bournemouth," says University of Huddersfield principal lecturer and criminologist Dr David Skinns. "It wasn't a particular crime hotspot, but nevertheless it spawned a whole network of cameras and soon every town and city wanted its own surveillance system.
"The truth is that a quarter of a century on it remains almost impossible to attribute any reduction in crime to the use of CCTV. Simply measuring crime levels before and after their introduction is not scientific enough because it ignores a host of other variables.
"Some have suggested that improved streetlighting is an equal deterrent and with even the most optimistic research suggesting CCTV can reduce incidents by 10 per cent at most, the question has to be whether that reduction is worth the cost."
The CCTV footage which saw Jamie Bulger being led out of the shopping centre by his two young killers and which tracked the last known movements of Jill Dando succeeded in convincing the public and many police officers the cameras were a new and vital part of modern detective work. However, for every offender caught and identified, there are hours of tape either too grainy to be submitted as evidence or filmed by cameras focusing into thin air.
"Certainly, CCTV has a role in apprehending criminals," says Dr Skinns. "Even if it doesn't show the actual crime, it can show an offender was at a certain place at a certain time. However, it's not the panacea a lot of people thought. Most of the footage sent to Crimewatch is unusable, often the picture quality is not good enough or the cameras have only managed to film the top of people's heads.
"Add in the number of cameras which are broken and it's not terribly well managed. A few years ago, the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Home Office produced a report on the effectiveness of CCTV which perhaps surprisingly given its authors raised very serious concerns.
"In many areas, way too much money had been spent on systems which simply didn't deliver the kind of coverage they wanted. Also in the early days supporters of CCTV vehemently denied it would lead to the displacement of crime, in fact that was said to be one of its benefits. Now many are calling for an expansion to the CCTV system because crime has spread. It stands to reason you can't have it both ways."
While there are those who have already begun to wonder aloud how many regular beat officers 500m would have bought, the gloss which marked the arrival of CCTV 25 years ago has not diminished. Despite the doubts and the lack of supporting evidence ever more sophisticated cameras are being developed at ever more cost.
"The technology has changed and improved over the years," adds Dr Skinns, who has been researching the phenomenon for the past 14 years. "We've gone from black and white to colour, from fixed to tilting cameras and now a great deal of work is being done on intelligence software which will be able to spot unusual movement or situations. Effectively, it should allow police officers to be alerted to the possibility of trouble before a crime has even taken place."
When the Tom Cruise film Minority Report was released in 2002, the idea of a world where people could be arrested for crimes they had yet to commit seemed a long way off. While the software under development may not yet be of the Hollywood blockbuster variety, even in its very basic form CCTV has raised questions about individual privacy. Three years ago, two CCTV officers from Merseyside were jailed for spying on a naked woman in her own home and subsequently showing the footage on a large plasma screen in Sefton Council's control room.
"The argument in favour of CCTV is it's only the guilty who have anything to worry about, but I'm not sure that's true," says Dr Skinns. "There is certainly evidence that technology has been misused. Maybe it's human nature, but instead of spotting genuine criminals, control staff in some areas have used it for their own voyeuristic purposes.
"There is also a real fear in some quarters that they are used to target homeless people who are already well-known to the police rather than detecting new crimes. I'm not sure whether we are justified spending that kind of money hassling people simply because they have found themselves living on the street."
Dr Skinns is not a lone voice. Last month the House of Lords sounded the warning bell about Britain's extensive surveillance system. The constitution committee claimed while CCTV and the country's DNA database are often held up as a way combating both terrorism and crime they risked undermining fundamental freedoms.
"The huge rise in surveillance and data collection by the state and other organisations risks undermining the long-standing traditions of privacy and individual freedom which are vital for democracy," said Lord Goodlad, the former Tory chief whip and chairman of the committee. "If the public are to trust that information about them is not be improperly used there should be much more openness about what data is collected, but whom and how it is used."
The report was particularly critical of local authorities using covert surveillance to trap everyone from fly tippers to parents they suspected were guilty of fraudulent school place applications
"In recent years the whole nature of privacy has changed with some people willing giving up their own sense of privacy to entertain the public, but it is a subject which needs to be debated," says Dr Skinns, who will hold a public lecture on the future of CCTV in Huddersfield this week. "When even the House of Lords says if the Government continues to increase the amount of surveillance the relationship between the state and the individual may change people have to take notice."
A number of years ago it was suggested the average
individual is caught on camera 300 times a day. That figure,
says Dr Skinns, may well be an exaggeration, but the underlying trend remains.
"I'm not sure it makes a difference whether it's 205 or 305 times a day. The fact is that it is a very large number and often you are entirely unaware of being filmed, " he says. "The idea of CCTV was that it was a visible deterrent, but somewhere along the line this seems to have changed. The fundamental premise of CCTV is public mistrust. However, it seems highly unlikely that we can go back to a time before CCTV. Whether we like it or not, we are stuck with the movement towards surveillance in general and the growth of CCTV in particular, so we have to make sure it's accountable.
"We should be aiming for a balanced way of dealing with crime, not simply pouring excessive amounts into CCTV systems which could be better used for other purposes."
Dr David Skinns's public lecture CCTV: Friendly Eye in the Sky or Big Brother? will take place at the University of Huddersfield tomorrow.
Email to a friend
Print this page- Celtic interested in Leeds United’s White
- Ball is in Leeds United’s court over contract - Snodgrass
- Sister ‘saw parents kill teenager Shafilea Ahmed for bringing dishonour on family’
- 20 degrees! At last, Yorkshire’s about to bask in sunshine
- Worker killed and trains halted on North York Moors steam railway
- Ball is in Leeds United’s court over contract - Snodgrass
- Celtic interested in Leeds United’s White
- Sister ‘saw parents kill teenager Shafilea Ahmed for bringing dishonour on family’
- Fears over faith split fuelled by free school proposals
- Luton Town 1 York City 2: York clear their heads after early blow to claim their place back in Football League
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Yorkshire
Tuesday 22 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 9 C to 23 C
Wind Speed: 12 mph
Wind direction: North
Tomorrow
Sunny spells
Temperature: 11 C to 22 C
Wind Speed: 10 mph
Wind direction: North east
