London Police Credit CCTV Cameras With Six Solved Crimes Per Day 280
stoilis writes "CCTV cameras across London help solve almost six crimes a day, the Metropolitan Police has said. According to the article, 'the number of suspects who were identified using the cameras went up from 1,970 in 2009 to 2,512 this year. The rise in the number of criminals caught also raises public confidence and counters bad publicity for CCTV.'"
Re:Cost:Benefit? (Score:4, Insightful)
Especially as most people convicted aren't actually punished anyway. What's the point in using expensive technology to catch a thief then just giving him a small fine or a caution?
Re:Categories (Score:5, Insightful)
FTA: "The Met said among the 2,512 suspects caught this year, four were suspected murderers, 23 rapists and sex attackers and five wanted gunmen."
But, what were the other 2,479 (98.7%)?
TFA also doesn't say anything about convictions either.
Re:Cost:Benefit? (Score:5, Insightful)
Last year, the headline was "One Crime Solved Per 1,000 London CCTV Cameras [slashdot.org]".
The rate can't be much better this year.
- RG>
Well, it would seem to be much better.
From the article, there's just under 60,000 cameras now. Six crimes solved per day times 365 days = about 2,200 crimes solved. So that's about one crime solved per 30 cameras per year.
Going from 1/1000 to 1/30 is a massive improvement, though I'm guessing that the difference isn't just the police program reaching maturity or something like that. For starters, I'll bet they count crimes differently between the two programs.
Still, even the modern figure seems pretty bad. So you've got 30 cameras up all year, with all the needed infrastructure behind these 30 cameras, and all together, they solved one crime. A quarter million hours of surveillance (30 cameras * 24 hours * 365 days) and you only solve one crime.
Re:Cost:Benefit? (Score:5, Insightful)
What's the point of giving petty* thieves more than a small fine or a caution upon conviction?
Should everyone, no matter how minor or severe the infraction, be sent to Federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison [youtube.com], where they get to make big rocks into little rocks until they die and get buried under a small white cross across the way from their cell?
Should the presence of video evidence, or the lack thereof, contribute to such sentencing? Or perhaps more importantly: Should the expense of such video evidence be a factor in the sentencing?
Discuss.
*: I wanted to use the word "minor" there, as in "minor infraction." But that might be confused with "minors," so I didn't use that word. "Petty" is the best I could come up with, though it doesn't quite fit either, but at the same time I wanted to be concise. In a twist of irony, in the course failing to conjure a better adjective than "minor" for the sake of being concise, it seems that this footnote has eliminated all concision in an attempt to explain my choice of words lest they be misconstrued by the pedants here (of which I am one). Bummer.
It doesn't make sense, does it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe they are just lying.
Re:Cost:Benefit? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's why Britain has sky-high crime rates compared to execution-happy Texas.
Oh wait....
Re:Categories (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't this basically say "we caught some people who may or may not have committed a crime"?!
And what's with the misleading article title about six crimes "solved" and all they mention in the article were people who were caught that were suspected of a crime? This whole article doesn't add up.
Not so great for the victim (Score:5, Insightful)
Just can't understand.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I just don't get why the Brits aren't more upset at the establishment 'keeping any eye' on them 24/7. Its already been proven that given the # of laws on the books NO-ONE can avoid committing an infraction against the law. A camera system that extensive means the gov't has the ability or at least the means to prosecute just about everyone in the country. Not to mention that treating everyone in the country as lawbreakers would do nothing more than enforce bad behavior, or at least anti-social behavior. I would think everyone would be walking around with Anonymous masks in public just to keep the illusion of privacy... or is anonymity illegal too?