I’ve just spoken to BBC Online researcher Joe Campbell about the effectiveness of CCTV systems in crime prevention and detection. This was as background for material regarding the Woolmer case, where the hotel had CCTV cameras trained on nearby corridors but, as is often the case, the analogue tapes used to record the images had been so heavily used that they were “fragile”.

Despite the rush to deploy CCTV cameras all over the UK in the late 80s and 90s, there was almost no significant research into their effectiveness. Indeed, Norris and Armstrong (The Maximum Surveillance Society: The Rise of CCTV) suggest that politicians did not want to know whether it was effective or not.Since finding the money centrally to promote jointly funded local schemes to deploy CCTV was relatively simple and the public believed that they helped to reduce crime, politicians would rather spend the money and be seen to be doing something rather than find out if what they were doing was effective (and exactly what is effective out of the various options) and be held properly to account for their efforts in tackling crime. In particular, no cost/benefit evaluations were done which considered the use of the money spent in other ways to reduce crime, either by providing other law enforcement measures or simply providing better street-lighting, or more facilities for young people (since much of the crime that CCTV has targetted is public order and low-value thefts).

Only recently have some studies suggested that CCTV has been effective:

Crime Prevention and Community Safety: An International Journal (2004) 6, 21–33: Evidence-based Crime Prevention: The Effectiveness of CCTV by Brandon C Welsh and David P Farrington.