I never liked the idea of CCTV, especially as it is London. It seems now, according to The Guardian, that the whole project hasn’t brought the expected return on investment and is a failure. Only 3% of crimes were solved by CCTV. The use of the information system including CCTV as well as all the related crime fighting services making use of it, have proved to be quite inflexible in their current status (e.g. officers claim that finding CCTV imaged is “hard work”). Therefore, measures have been proposed for them to be improved (e.g. new database making effective use of the images, put images of suspects out on the Internet, etc. ).
The Detective Chief Inspector Mick Neville, the officer in charge of the Metropolitan police unit. Among others he said: “There’s no fear of CCTV. Why don’t people fear it? [They think] the cameras are not working.”
I interpret the above as the objective of CCTV, thus, the UK authorities are aiming at imposing fear to prevent outlaws from taking action. But what is the impact to the rest of us? Apathy maybe?
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May 18, 2008 at 12:16 |
Thanks for the information on this, it’s very useful and the site is great.
We live in a very different society compared to 20 years ago. I remember we used to leave the front door open at night and not be too bothered if we left the car doors/windows open (if there was no rain of course!) but how things have changed hey. We have a small business in Shropshire and have just installed a CCTV security system from Interwatch Security. We’re not that technical but they came in and recommended a certain type of camera and since the IP cameras have been installed and physically noticed outside our offices in Shrewsbury and Telford the number of incidents has been reduced. I wish I was back in the 80’s where surveillance was not an issue.