CCTV schemes in city and town centres have little effect on crime, says report
Alan Travis, Home affairs editor | 18.05.2009 19:39
CCTV schemes in city and town centres have little effect on crime, says report
Criminologists' research shows surveillance cameras are 'at their most effective' in cutting vehicle crime in car parks
Criminologists' research shows surveillance cameras are 'at their most effective' in cutting vehicle crime in car parks
The Guardian, Monday 18 May 2009
The use of closed-circuit television in city and town centres and public housing estates does not have a significant effect on crime, according to Home Office-funded research to be distributed to all police forces in England and Wales this summer.
The review of 44 research studies on CCTV schemes by the Campbell Collaboration found that they do have a modest impact on crime overall but are at their most effective in cutting vehicle crime in car parks, especially when used alongside improved lighting and the introduction of security guards.
The authors, who include Cambridge University criminologist, David Farrington, say while their results lend support for the continued use of CCTV, schemes should be far more narrowly targeted at reducing vehicle crime in car parks.
Results from a 2007 study in Cambridge which looked at the impact of 30 cameras in the city centre showed that they had no effect on crime but led to an increase in the reporting of assault, robbery and other violent crimes to the police.
Home Office ministers cited the review last week in their official response to the critical report from the House of Lords constitution committee on surveillance published earlier this year. The peers warned that the steady expansion of the "surveillance society", including the spread of CCTV, risked undermining fundamental freedoms, including the right to privacy.
In their response the Home Office disclosed that the National Police Improvement Agency is planning new research into the effectiveness of CCTV. The Campbell Collaboration review, by Farrington and a Massachusetts University criminologist, Brandon Welsh, concludes that CCTV is more effective in reducing crime in Britain than in other countries – as the Home Office points out. But it also makes clear that of the 44 research studies the authors reviewed, only seven covered countries outside Britain and four of those involved the United States.
The Campbell Collaboration report says that CCTV is now the single most heavily-funded crime prevention measure operating outside the criminal justice system and its rapid growth has come with a huge price tag. It adds that £170m was spent on CCTV schemes in town and city centres, car parks and residential areas between 1999 and 2001 alone. "Over the last decade, CCTV accounted for more than threequarters of total spending on crime prevention by the British Home Office," the report says.
The Lords report said that £500 million was spent in Britain on CCTV in the decade up to 2006, money which in the past would have gone on street lighting or neighbourhood crime prevention initiatives.
Welsh and Farrington say there has been concern that all this funding has been based on a handful of apparently successful schemes that were usually less than rigorously evaluated, done with varying degrees of competence and varying degrees of independence from government.
Their research review, which was funded by the Home Office and the Swedish Council for Crime Prevention, says that future CCTV schemes need high quality, independent evaluation
The use of closed-circuit television in city and town centres and public housing estates does not have a significant effect on crime, according to Home Office-funded research to be distributed to all police forces in England and Wales this summer.
The review of 44 research studies on CCTV schemes by the Campbell Collaboration found that they do have a modest impact on crime overall but are at their most effective in cutting vehicle crime in car parks, especially when used alongside improved lighting and the introduction of security guards.
The authors, who include Cambridge University criminologist, David Farrington, say while their results lend support for the continued use of CCTV, schemes should be far more narrowly targeted at reducing vehicle crime in car parks.
Results from a 2007 study in Cambridge which looked at the impact of 30 cameras in the city centre showed that they had no effect on crime but led to an increase in the reporting of assault, robbery and other violent crimes to the police.
Home Office ministers cited the review last week in their official response to the critical report from the House of Lords constitution committee on surveillance published earlier this year. The peers warned that the steady expansion of the "surveillance society", including the spread of CCTV, risked undermining fundamental freedoms, including the right to privacy.
In their response the Home Office disclosed that the National Police Improvement Agency is planning new research into the effectiveness of CCTV. The Campbell Collaboration review, by Farrington and a Massachusetts University criminologist, Brandon Welsh, concludes that CCTV is more effective in reducing crime in Britain than in other countries – as the Home Office points out. But it also makes clear that of the 44 research studies the authors reviewed, only seven covered countries outside Britain and four of those involved the United States.
The Campbell Collaboration report says that CCTV is now the single most heavily-funded crime prevention measure operating outside the criminal justice system and its rapid growth has come with a huge price tag. It adds that £170m was spent on CCTV schemes in town and city centres, car parks and residential areas between 1999 and 2001 alone. "Over the last decade, CCTV accounted for more than threequarters of total spending on crime prevention by the British Home Office," the report says.
The Lords report said that £500 million was spent in Britain on CCTV in the decade up to 2006, money which in the past would have gone on street lighting or neighbourhood crime prevention initiatives.
Welsh and Farrington say there has been concern that all this funding has been based on a handful of apparently successful schemes that were usually less than rigorously evaluated, done with varying degrees of competence and varying degrees of independence from government.
Their research review, which was funded by the Home Office and the Swedish Council for Crime Prevention, says that future CCTV schemes need high quality, independent evaluation
Alan Travis, Home affairs editor
Homepage:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/may/18/cctv-crime-police
Comments
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Every study shows CCTV ineffectual
18.05.2009 20:04
"An estimated 4.2 million cameras now observe the country's 60 million people going about their everyday business, from getting on a bus to lining up at the bank to driving around London. It's widely estimated that the average Briton is scrutinized by 300 cameras a day. For the Home Office-funded study, academics from the University of Leicester studied 14 closed-circuit TV systems in a variety of settings, including town centers, parking lots, hospitals and residential areas. Only the parking lot scheme was shown to cause a fall in crime. Previous studies of the effectiveness of CCTVs have come to similar conclusions. "
The crime reduction claims being made by CCTV proponents are not convincing. Three recent criminological reports (Home Office, Scottish Office and Southbank University) have discredited the conventional wisdom about the cameras effectiveness. In a report to the Scottish Office on the impact of CCTV, Jason Ditton, Director of the Scottish Centre for Criminology, argued that the claims of crime reduction are little more than fantasy. "All (evaluations and statistics) we have seen so far are wholly unreliable", The British Journal of Criminology described the statistics as "....post hoc shoestring efforts by the untrained and self interested practitioner."
"Professor Martin Gill is correct but understates the problem. The truth is that over 80% of all installed surveillance CCTV, mostly wide FOV fixed cameras, is totally useless for Police purposes. The weakest link is the digital video recorder (DVR ) as most are rubbish producing unusable fuzzy blobs as images. Unfortunately so many, and that includes many interviewed by Martin Gill, do not have the slightest idea what a surveillance CCTV system is supposed to provide. The prime and most positive purpose is to provide archive stored video evidence of a crime to facilitate arrest and evidential quality images for sucessful prosecution. I see hundreds of such video streams every week but very few, less than 10% are of any value. If you are an imaging specialist or CCTV manager in either a Police Force or Local Government then if you identify yourself and your snail mail address I will send you a 70 page document that expands on the problem."
Lee Tracey - Imaging Division, Photographic Department, West Midlands Police, Lloyd House, Birmingham -
"The home secretary, Charles Clarke, is transforming Britain into a police state, one of the country's former leading anti-terrorist police chiefs said yesterday.
George Churchill-Coleman, who headed Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist squad as they worked to counter the IRA during their mainland attacks in the late 1980s and early 1990s, said Mr Clarke's proposals to extend powers, such as indefinite house arrest, were "not practical" and threatened to further marginalise minority communities."
Danny
Homepage:
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/03/335022.html?c=on#c143681
Not true
19.05.2009 18:03
# 21% fewer crimes and offences were recorded in the 24 months after installation of CCTV in Airdrie town centre compared to the 24 months prior to the introduction of CCTV. (This figure, and those given below, have been adjusted to remove the effects of seasonality and underlying trends).
# Crimes of dishonesty, which include housebreaking, shoplifting and theft of and from motor vehicles, saw the largest percentage reduction of 48% in the 24 months after CCTV.
# Crimes of fireraising and vandalism fell by 19% following the installation of CCTV.
# The police cleared up 16% more crimes and offences in the 24 months after CCTV.
# There was no evidence that crimes were 'displaced' from the town centre to areas without CCTV - either the immediately surrounding area or the rest of the Police Sub-division.
Miserablist
MI serablist
19.05.2009 20:14
So Andy, your Aidrie study shows a drop in crime does it? Would you care to comment on the fact that your Labour government facts and figures in that report aren't adjusted for the then drop in crime to produce a false prospective that the CCTV was responsible? Did you happen to notice that that was a two part study, and the Glasgow part of the study sharply contradicts your thesis that CCTV cuts crime?
Let me quote from the main findings of that half of the report:
- Once the crime and offence figures were adjusted to take account of the general downward trend in crimes and offences, reductions were noted in certain categories but there was no evidence to suggest that the cameras had reduced crime overall in the city centre.
Just out of interest, why are you as a supposed 'Glasgow Anarchist' so keen to promote CCTV? Do you agree with your friend and ally Richard aka M aka MI5 that CCTV should be compulsory in peoples homes?
Danny
Homepage:
http://www.scotcrim.u-net.com/researchc2.htm
lol
20.05.2009 16:27
"Doesn't stop it being a load of pish" may perhaps suggest that I think CCTV to be "a load of pish"
Moron. I was just pointing out that nothing is ever as cut and dried as folk would like it to be, there is nothing black and white when it comes to human behaviour. Some places CCTV may seem to have an effect upon street crime, other places it doesn't.
You however will always be a fanny, Danny.
'kin 'ell I should be a poet with rhyming skillz like that.
Miserablist
Spin it if you will
20.05.2009 17:58
The only other person who has supported CCTV here is your pal Richard, the admitted girl-beater with admitted links to the SAS, someone who shares your propensity for being a police grass. So what is the relative cost of CCTV compared to employing police grasses? I'd prefer better street lighting myself.
Danny
Six facts about WelshBoyAndy
20.05.2009 19:08
Upon first meeting me he asked me to download BackOrrifice for him so he could hack into government systems. The reason he couldn't find it was because it had changed it's name to BackOrrifice2000, BO2K. I gave it to him, but had to warn him that if he wasn't smart enough to find it, he would never be able to use it safely. He claimed he was going to bring down the British national grid, but don't hold your breathe.
2) WelshBoyAndy is a grass
He leaked my first action at Faslane 8 years ago. I was a new visitor, and I had thought up a sweet stunt that needed a few people to leverage it for publicity. I asked Andy if he knew people who could help. He was the only person I told about it, and I told him using the Falsane protocol, writing it down on a bit of paper and passing it only to the person you were talking to. His written response tried to talk me out of it claiming it was too dangerous. It wasn't dangerous at all but then Andy isn't too smart. Andy then passed it to his friends, breaking the Falsane protocol and against my express wishes. Soon after I was being questioned about it by the authorities and told by a recruitment company that I was blacklisted. I haven't worked since and previously I had an increasingly successful career.
3) WelshBoyAndy is a hypocrite.
I took the Falsaners some of my old Chomsky books. WelshBoyAndy reacted angrily, saying 'Why should we read this old middle class prick when we are living the life? There are far better anarchist writers'? When asked who he recommended he only praised John Zerzan. Now Andy only slags Zerzan.
The same goes for Ani Difranco, who he condemmed as 'shitty womens music' only to request her CD's years later.
Andy puts this down to him used to being an arse back then. Nothings changed except his labels.
4) WelshBoyAndy is an inactive and manipulative fraud
At a demo about the invasion of Lebanon, I bumped into him and asked if he would like to take part in action. 'I'm not arrestable' came the reply. What Andy does do is big himself up as an anarchist in pub meetings. He is good at that.
He promised to come through to a demo in support of a prisoner, only to back out and then be instrumental in a smear campaign against the prisoner on LibCom, plus manipulate against the group that was supporting him.
When I posted on LibCom to defend the prisoner, Andy had me banned for calling him WelshAndy, at that point his IM name, instead of WelshBoy, his LibCom name, even though he was referred to as Andy there too, even though other posters referred to themselves by their true names, and even though he could've just asked me to edit it.
5) WelshBoyAndy has even dodgier friends
WelshboyAndy tried to link an arts collective to paedos falsely, nearly wrecking the event. However when warned that he might want to wary of an activist who has abused children, he warned the abuser to issue legal letters against the victims.
Another of their common friends has admitted being linked to the SAS and attacking young women on Indymedia. Andy thinks these admitted police informers are salt of the earth activists.
6) WelshBoyAndy is a coward.
He just challenged me to a fight and then crapped out of it. He said 'Name the time and place!' and so I named somewhere I know he hangs out, only for him to say 'No, that is too far away'. Brave Sir Robin. He deserves everything that is going to happen to him.
Danny
Miserable liar
21.05.2009 09:40
Danny
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