Posted on 07/17/2002 8:29:58 PM PDT by Liberty Belle
Crooks caught on camera
Brits spend a bundle on video surveillance, but is it paying off?
Wednesday, July 17, 2002
Great Britain is experiencing a rise in crime, and the 40,000 public surveillance cameras that have been installed in cities and towns over the past decade don't seem to be making much of a dent.
Big Brother is watching, but do the crooks even care?
The answer to that question is important for Britain, which has invested much hope and money in public closed-circuit television, or CCTV, as a tool to fight crime. More than $600 million has been spent thus far; in a recent two-year period, the British Home Office devoted three-quarters of its crime-prevention budget to buying cameras and staffing the monitors with trained police observers.
Whether the cameras are effective is also of interest to the United States, where there's been experimentation -- mostly unsuccessful -- in combining CCTV with face-recognition technology to scan crowds for fugitive criminals.
Do cameras make a difference? The evidence seems to say "not much.''
In Britain, according to a national study by an independent crime-prevention group, the Home Office's own statistics cast doubt on the ability of CCTV to deter offenders. The study looked at 24 different camera networks, six in parking garages, four on public transport, and 14 in city centers or public-housing projects.
The results:
Of the the 14 street-watching networks, six experienced a drop in crime. But crime actually rose in two of the 14 areas.
Two of the four transport networks saw a decrease in crime, while one saw a rise.
Cameras seemed to have more effect in parking garages. Five of the six garages saw a 45 percent drop in crime, mostly in thefts from cars.
But overall, the drop in crime in the 24 areas was a statistically insignificant 3 percent, the study concluded.
Analysts say that cameras seem to have more of a deterrent effect on property crime than on violent crime. This may be because thieves tend to calculate their risks before acting, whereas violent people tend to act on impulse, often a drunken one.
Critics of CCTV contend that rather than deter crime, cameras push it to alleyways and side streets that aren't under surveillance. Much of the money invested in cameras might have been better spent to improve street lighting, which has been shown to reduce crime by 20 percent, the study observed.
CCTV has notched up some well-publicized successes. Surveillance tapes played a large part in the conviction of London pub bomber David Copeland, who was caught on camera as he walked the streets.
And the cameras do have many defenders -- although bear in mind that the tendency when one sinks a lot of money into a project is to justify the expense. In Birmingham, an industrial city in the English Midlands, backers of the Citywatch project, a partnership between police and store owners, said they have "damning evidence'' that proves the study wrong. But the best damning evidence the city came up with was that shoplifting in Birmingham is down 20 percent.
Combine the 40,000 public cameras with the estimated 2 million private closed-circuit cameras in use, and Britons may be the most-watched people on Earth. Estimates are that the average city dweller is captured on tape about 500 times a week.
Although polls show that many Britons feel safer with the cameras around, CCTV seems to offer at best a modest improvement in personal safety in return for being constantly spied on while going about one's lawful business.
This is a tradeoff that Americans should be more skeptical about making.
Lighting can be good, but like the camaras will mostly just push the crime elsewhere.
I'm afraid they need to do what we have done and is working -- give longer prison sentences. Plus cut back on the dole, especially the dole for women, to strengthen families.
How would that work?
The cameras are paying off, but only for their real purpose, control and intimidation of the populace. Crime control was merely the excuse for installing the system, not the purpose.
There are too many other systems in place to make sure that the family remains an endangered species. Just take a look at the incentive for women to file for divorce. Welfare payments are petty compared to the money behind the divorce and custody industries.
Keep in mind that there is a difference between
parliamentary government and ours. The president
is both leader of government and head of state.
The prime minister is merely the member of
parliament elevated by his party to run government.
Since s/he does not represent that state (that is
the Queen's function) it is much easier to get
rid of a PM, usually by a vote of no confidence.
The tsunami of removing an impeached president
from office, as we have seen, is very difficult.
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How would that work?
I was thinking of the AFDC system in the U.S., being partially dismantled in the U.S. by welfare reform, a system which pays women to have out of wedlock children. Of course, the connection to crime is that children in traditional families are unlikely to become criminals, especially if their neighbors also mostly live in such families. How relevant this is to the UK I do not know fully. However, I do know a British couple that, in my opinion, foolishly won't marry because the woman would lose her widow's pension. This government policy is the kind of disincentive to decency, not always easy to fix, that contributes to the crime rate.
Oh, my. Unlikely? I'm not even
sure I'd buy less likely without seeing
the data.
Oh, my. Unlikely? I'm not even sure I'd buy less likely without seeing the data.
Given that sociology is the most liberal discipline (except maybe linguistics) in today's liberal universities, you wouldn't find a whole lot of recent research on this unchanging truth in, say, the current issue of the American Sociological Review. However, a look, at a college library, into sociology of the family textbooks from the 1950's, checking out family disorganization in the indexes, should lead to mounds of vitually undisputed nitty gritty statistical evidence.
Here's a good recent article:
Another good link:
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