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10,000 Cameras Ineffective At Deterring Crime
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Thu Sep 20, 2007 08:31 PM
from the clearly-we-need-more-cameras dept.
from the clearly-we-need-more-cameras dept.
Mike writes "London has 10,000 crime-fighting CCTV cameras which cost £200 million but an analysis of the publicly funded spy network has cast serious doubt on its ability to help solve crime. In fact, four out of five of the boroughs with the most cameras have a record of solving crime that is below average. The study found that police are no more likely to catch offenders in areas with hundreds of cameras than in those with hardly any. Could this be an effective argument against the proliferation of cameras or will politicians simply ignore the facts and press ahead?"
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Firehose:10,000 Cameras Ineffective At Deterring Crime by Anonymous Coward
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The answer is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:The answer is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Many around here ignore facts as well ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Many around here misrepresent and ignore facts as well. That and they have emotional poorly thought out reactions that are rooted more in their politics than it logic. Note the statement:
"The study found that police are no more likely to catch offenders in areas with hundreds of cameras than in those with hardly any."
If you apply a modest amount of logic it might occur to you that everything seems to be described in terms of percentages. The fact the percentages may be similar does not mean cameras are ineffective. What is the volume of crime? The absence of such info should make an unbiased reader quite suspicious. Also what were the volumes before the cameras? One of the stated goals of the camera systems is that they would be a deterrent. The volume of crime could be a fraction of pre-camera days and the percentage of solved crimes could be the same.
Re:Many around here ignore facts as well ... (Score:5, Insightful)
The other thing is that if people know that there are a huge number of cameras, they are more likely to where hats or utilize other means of being hard to id with cameras.
I haven't seen the images that the cameras capture, but the images I see from bank robberies and similar when the FBI releases them, are usually grainy and difficult to make out what the person looks like. Good if you want to be incognito as it makes it more difficult to identify scars and such, bad if you want the public to find the person.
The main thing that a camera system is good at doing is tracking people. And while that is a huge security problem, it can be beneficial to people that have been accused of a crime falsely, as it makes for an easier alibi.
Overall, though the results don't seem that much different than what one might expect. Even the definition of a below average number of crimes being solved seems a bit tough of a sell, as there really isn't such thing as an average crime, each crime tends to be somewhat different than the others, it could very well be that the dumber criminals moved out, and the smarter ones moved in because of less competition from other criminals for targets.
Re:Many around here ignore facts as well ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead of rushing to apply logic, you should have spent a bit more time learning about all the data that was available. If you had done so, you would have realized that this was just another metric that demonstrated a lack of improvement, rather than being the only or even the primary metric that showed no improvement.
I know, it's an unfair criticism. After all, research is hard, but a pointless and distracting game of "devil's advocate" is easy.
Re:Many around here ignore facts as well ... (Score:5, Insightful)
"In fact, four out of five of the boroughs with the most cameras have a record of solving crime that is below average."
If I was in charge of using CCTV cameras to try and prevent crime then I would try and put the most cameras in areas with below average crime solving rates. In that case such comparisons are useless, only comparisons with previous rates for those areas would be useful (for instance the crime rate might go down by 10%, but can still be below average).
I am not defending blanket CCTV coverage, but likewise I can't let such horrible statistic interpretations go unnoticed. After all, pirates stop global warming.
Re:Many around here ignore facts as well ... (Score:5, Informative)
So, we have 5 'High camera' boroughs, they're all officially classed as inner london and have a correspondingly high crime rate. Of the 5 high camera boroughs, 2 sets of 2 are neighbours, Lewisham and Greenwich and Hackney and Tower Hamlets. Hackney and Tower Hamlets are an interesting pair, one has an above average clear up rate, and one has a lower than average clear up rate. These two boroughs between them (tower hamlets in whole and southern hackney) constitute the East End, traditionally thought of as one of the worst slums in Europe. The area consists mostly of social housing and old victorian terraces (for the gentrifiers), both boroughs have a stonkingly high crime rate (especially Hackney, which has a feirce reputation for drugs, guns and violent crime). Discussing the subtle differences between the boroughs (of which there are many) is outside the scope of the post, my point is that the factors that effect crime are broadly similar, as is the crime rate and number of cameras. Some other factor is effecting the clear up rate.
As for the low camera boroughs, the average price for a house in 'The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea' is now over $2,000,000US and Sutton is an affluent southwestern suburb flirting with rural Surrey with one of the lowest crime rates in London. Waltham Forest however is home to some of the poorest and most deprived neighbourhoods in London, lying just NE of Hackney.
My point is that to look at the clear up rate and number of CCTV cameras is really oversimplistic, but that's what the evening standard does.
The longer, more accurate answer is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:ignore the facts and press ahead. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hypothesise at random, spend a wad or two on well-connected suppliers and contractors, in the absence of empirical validation of the utility or necessity.
Then declare on failure to achieve any result at all that one has now acquired a valid data point.
Hmmm.... Better try this again, with a different type of camera! Then - at worst - we'll have eliminated two possibilites, at the bargain cost of 400 Million!
GET THIS THROUGH YOUR HEAD! Crime is the excuse used to end dissent. If there were political protest of any size, you can bet the participants would have all been ID'd and added to the "terror" database.
V for Vendetta.
Cameras don't deter criminals. (Score:5, Insightful)
And politicians don't admit they were wrong... (Score:3, Insightful)
Nope. It's always a case of "I didn't have enough funding to do it properly!"
Seriously, how hard is it to beat a camera. A hoodie, a baseball cap and sunglasses - it's not like they
Re:Cameras don't deter criminals. (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, they do. The Brits would know that one of their lords, Conrad Black, was caught on camera taking evidence against a court order. A lot of people will think twice about hidden cameras.
The amount of stuff available for smash and grab or just grab has risen significantly over the last twenty years, but it isn't just good upbringing that's deterring a whole generation of shoplifters. We all know that a good number of these youngsters wouldn't think twice about ripping someone off given the chance, as one can see from the bald-faced filesharing that industry is essentially paying lip service to stemming the upstoppable tide. Only the most desperate or the most ignorant people risk physical crime. Technology has made it much too difficult--the real deterrence is the combination of camera and the willingness to prosecute.
Properity and temptation abound, and many people ski down the slippery slope of selfish ends justifying any means. The next time you're out and about and haven't been brained by someone disguised in a suit, you have to thank technology for cameras that prevent that person from being victimized by some 1 hoodlum in 1000 people, and thereby becoming a soulless predator after having lost faith in humanity and civilization, and for nonnegotiables encoded in plastic.
Still, it is strange that 10,000 cameras are said to make little difference. That's easily said, but was there much suspicious activity seen on video, or was the halo effect in effect? The halo effect is an attitude that a driver might have when he sees a police car--the driver will do everything right, like a little angel, until he believes there's no more chance of observation, and then it's back to speeding and rolling through stop signs.
Multitudes of cameras have this numbing effect. People might behave woodenly by habit when they're outside but take out the stress inside by commiting even more devious or out-of-control acts just to keep themselves from totally falling apart. The cameras would be accepted more easily if they were known to help catch very frightening criminals. But it all depends on the type of people being surveiled. Were they upstanding people before the cameras were in place?
The concept of using an array of cameras to track someone in real-time would be difficult over a large area. Such an array in a casino works when all areas are visible. A much larger area requires many more cameras. As technology improves these cameras might have rapidly oscillating focus and zoom as well as quick swivel, much like a lawn sprinker or the eyes of a driver. If hundreds of millions are available to play with, this is the kind of technology that will pop up.
Once the technology is deemed good enough, it will be deployed to troubled areas like Baghdad. One may firmly believe a lot of funding will be put on this technology.
Re:Cameras don't deter criminals. (Score:5, Insightful)
>> and the willingness to prosecute.
>> Once the technology is deemed good enough, it will be deployed to troubled areas like Baghdad.
Interesting. Would you care to explain how to prosecute a suicide bomber?
Re:Cameras don't deter criminals. (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
That's not the problem. Clearly it's a waste of money. If criminals don't feel deterred to commit a crime if there's a camera watching them, by bother spending 200 million quid on the system? Couldn't that money be used to help cure the main causes of crim
Re:Cameras don't deter criminals. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Cameras don't deter criminals. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cameras don't deter criminals. (Score:5, Funny)
Bad statistics. (Score:5, Insightful)
is the first comment by RandomVisitor on the story at Bruce Schneier's blog [slashdot.org]. It's really quite true; we can't judge based on these statistics whether it's working or not.
Camera proponents spin it both ways (Score:5, Insightful)
An increase in crime is evidence that more cameras are necessary.
three ways... (Score:5, Informative)
A drop in crime is evidence that the cameras work. An increase in crime is evidence that more cameras are necessary.
You forgot one: "unchanging crime levels mean the cameras kept crime from getting worse, and removing them would mean an explosion of crime." It'd be like firing cops; no politician who wants to keep his or her office would dare do it, even if it a sound decision. The slightest crime, and victims will blame the official, and the press will be more than happy to stick the microphone in front of their face while they do it.
The MBTA (which shockingly reversed its decades-old policy of prohibiting cameras on MBTA property) had been going nuts installing "high resolution digital cameras" around the system. Not anywhere on the platforms, mind you- but at the fare gates.
They blew a lot of smoke to the two competing pulp-journalism freebies (Metro and "Boston Now", which litter the system) about how great the cameras were, how they'd catch anyone jumping fares, etc. Grabauskas bragged about the "high resolution" cameras, and both rags printed images of a guy kicking a gate in (yep. They're that weak- a decent kick will take them out of commission.) The photo was embarassingly bad- you could barely tell it was a guy, and barely ID what he was wearing. The image was low-resolution, blurry, over-compressed, and full of noise.
Oh, and they didn't seem to help when two kids shot up another kid on the Orange line (the MBTA police's response was to transfer the entire trainload of passengers onto busses and hold them for pat-down searches. This was despite witnesses repeatedly stating that the two shooters immediately fled the scene and left the station. They still haven't been found, months later.)
Also, if you're in North Station on the platform for outbound, take a look at the couple of cameras situated at the end of the platform closest to the "Garden". You'll note one is a FLIR camera, pointed into the tunnel. What the hell for?
North Station is also where the MBTA police regularly conduct forced "screenings", usually during rush-hour. For those who don't know: North Station is where people transfer from the orange/green lines to the commuter lines to get home. The MBTA police, like complete idiots, park their vehicles up in front of the station (which is a giant "hey, there's a "random search" thing going on here!" sign), and then stop people trying to get home (where missing a train can mean you don't get home for another 1-2 hours or more.)
Re:Camera proponents spin it both ways (Score:4, Insightful)
Now its more cameras, less crime.
10-15 years, there will be no rights here.
I dont see the point in arguing effectiveness (Score:5, Insightful)
Dont fall into the trap of arguing the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of something that we already know has nothing to do with crime.
Same problem that surveillance has always had. (Score:3, Interesting)
-jcr
Re:Same problem that surveillance has always had. (Score:4, Interesting)
Cameras of the sort used all over the country are run by central control/operations rooms which are manned by civilians employed by the local councils (not cops). They have police radios in the control rooms though so we can speak to them, although they are under no obligation to do as we ask (although in practise, they usually do). There are two points which you may find interesting which I don't think have been mentioned yet:
1) Normally, the cameras record only one frame every few seconds (presumably so as to not max out their storage on account of the vast number of cameras, heh). Operators cycle through and view them as they see fit depending on the time of day, and if it looks like something's going down, either they or the police can request that a particular camera "go to realtime" recording, so as to capture events at normal speed. However if something such as a mugging happens when the cameras are "idle", if it happens very very quickly it is possible that it won't be recorded at all.
2) This is the bit that is in response to the parent -- In the event that we (the police) are investigating an incident, we could submit a CCTV request to the control centre, which is a piece of paperwork containing things such as a location, a short description of what (allegedly) happened, and a time bracket. Operators would then go through the recordings manually to try and find it, and if we were lucky it would have been caught on camera, whereupon they would send us a DVD or (more usually) a VCR tape of the relevant parts of the recording. At no time did we, the police, have direct access to the CCTV system, either in a day-to-day sense or in access to the archives.
I think this is an important point, because it means that the gatekeepers are civilians who are more directly accountable to the elected council representatives, and thus, the people. Of course the usual semi-FUD about cops becoming maniacal power-crazed demons can be half applied to them too, but it makes me think of something I read on
Interesting but useless (Score:5, Insightful)
So, ask law enforcement. (Score:3, Insightful)
If you search BBC for CCTV, what you find is nothing favorable. Law enforcement figures consistently say the money would be better spent on normal police work. Studdies never show a real decrease in crime. Demographics don't matter because the cameras a
on another hand.. (Score:5, Insightful)
on another hand, if I want to do crime, I wouldn't want to do it in place that has hundreds of cameras.
If the cameras help reducing crime rate, then they work.
perception & reality (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:perception & reality (Score:4, Interesting)
Cameras = Seem a solution = People vote for them to "solve crime"
Poor analysis (Score:4, Insightful)
The cameras are not there to catch criminals, but to deter them. Those who would otherwise be committing crimes in full catchable view of the cameras are no longer doing so.
Don't get me wrong, I like my privacy as much as the next /.er but accuracy is important.
Re:Poor analysis (Score:5, Interesting)
Furthermore, I won't buy arguments that cameras deter crime generally because criminals don't know where cameras are, so they simply stop committing crimes all around. Criminals, though they risk injury and imprisonment in their chosen profession, really aren't stupid. They are clever like a fox -- they find 'safe' areas to prowl and pick 'marks' to target. If they know a camera is in the area, they will avoid it. If you ever doubt that criminals are clever and crafty, overhear a conversation amongst drug dealers and buyers. They know the ins and outs of reasonable search, suspicion, evidence, punishment, and mandatory sentencing.
"Well, if they are so smart and they know so much about the law, then why do they get caught?" They know ( and learn -- sometimes the hard way ) the risks, and they willingly take them. Getting caught is part of the game. It's like asking, "If investors know so much about finance, why would they ever lose money?" Criminals view it as part of the system. You win some, you lose some. Time in prison is seen by many young black men as part of growing up. Sooner or later, you are going to do time.
Re:Poor analysis (Score:4, Insightful)
When a friend asked the police to check the cameras after theft of his motorbike, he was palmed off with "it'll be a waste of time, it'll just show us a bunch of kids in hoods". This shows two things 1) that the police aren't using the cameras to solve most crime, and 2) the criminals are concealing their faces so it doesn't matter if they're caught on camera or not.
Confusion (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, when did "facts" actually figure into politics. Everything is emotion. "Its for the children", "War on _______", "help the homeless" etc are all emotional stimuli.
Police (Score:5, Insightful)
Given the assumption that not all cops are bad, and going further saying that most cops are good, the solution to the crime problem is to get police back on foot in communities.
You can only stop so much crime blowing through an arterial road at 45mph. But regularly patrolling an area on foot, a good cop will notice that "Mrs. Allison's car is gone, and the front door is wide open" prompting a closer look.
Also, foot patrol (or bicycle, rollerblade, whatever) cops aren't generally tied up with traffic stops and other non-criminal events. They are free to stop the little crimes (graffiti, vandalism, burglary) that scare off the 'good' folks allowing seedier elements to take over an area.
But, cops on foot are expensive. And you need a lot of them to be effective. And since they're going after criminals, they're not making the city any money in the form of tickets and fines.
There are some jobs best done by real humans on location. Maybe your board meeting with the Beijing office can be done via teleconference, but protecting residents and preventing crime cannot.
Re:Police (Score:5, Insightful)
When it comes to "fighting crime," the answer is much deeper and more complex than just trying to figure out how to use public force to prevent what ends up being a private property issue.
I personally do believe in John Lott's research that more guns means less crime, but I don't think that is the answer -- just handing out guns. When you have responsible gun owners (which can include children, too), and a responsible knowledge of what constitutes private property, you increase a criminal's risk in going forward with a crime. A property owner that is responsible has many reasons to use defensive force to protect their property; a public officer has almost no reason to stop a crime from being committed, and if the property owners aren't aware that they are the first line of defense, there will never be enough cops to stop crime.
For me, before we even really discuss decriminalization of guns, we have to consider how many crimes may be committed because of non-violent actions that have been criminalized. How many crimes are committed in protecting a black market of goods from one competitor to another? Drug sales are non-violent (two consenting parties bartering), as is prostitution, gambling, and a plethora of other non-violent actions that are called criminal. These create massive black markets where guns are the answer to protecting markets. By removing non-violent actions as crimes, you can greatly decrease these black markets -- bringing down the crimes associated with protecting those markets.
In addition to reducing black market crimes, decriminalizing said non-violent actions has a long term effect of putting fewer people in prison. As someone who has known more than one person go to prison for a minor offense only to come out with more ideas for committing more crime, I would believe that we'd have fewer violent criminals if we put fewer non-violent criminals in jail. Again, this is a long term effect that you can't judge as fruitful overnight.
We need more private property freedom -- that's the end goal. When people are free to protect their property, and free to use their property in non-violent bartering, you also have more reason for people to defend their property rather than put hope in the cops. I have no hope in the cops: not the traffic cops, not the anti-gang cops, not the anti-drug cops. I have faith in myself, and my direct family and friends.
Police are part of the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Forward to 2000 or thereabouts, and the police are remote figures in flak jackets, almost always inside cars. They are not part of the community, and most teenagers don't identify with them at all. The Government wants to reintroduce the village policeman, under the name of "Community support officers". And who opposes it? The police. The truth is, too much exposure to US TV programs (yes, a study in Manchester showed that some police there were consciously emulating "police" in cop shows) has poisoned their own perception of their role, and many of them are afraid that community police will be too successful.
Where I live, which is effectively a village on the edge of a small town, we now have these PCSOs. Many evenings I see them out talking to the kids on the street, just talking to them, like our village policemnan used to talk to us in the 1960s. The wheel is coming a bit full circle, and it's about time it did. Cameras are useless without the desire of the community to support its rule enforcers.
However, one big factor has changed. Our village policeman did not have to deal with large numbers of drunks about from 11p.m. to 4a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. He occasionally had to put a drunk in the cell, but that was about it. Community policing does not work in the UK's disgusting and horrible drunk culture because reasonable people cannot deal with aggressive, knife wielding drunks.(I'm allowed to say this; it's the most shameful thing about this country.) This is the root cause of the cameras. If we fixed the drunk problem, there would be no need for security cameras. This is one case where the US has mostly got it right and we have got it wrong, and I would vote unthinkingly for the first politician who was willing to bring in the laws that apply in Utah, or even Manhattan.
There's a certain presumption ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hollywood lied! (Score:4, Insightful)
Whats their strategy? (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously? Look at the war on drugs. (Score:3, Insightful)
You bet your ass... (Score:4, Insightful)
> proliferation of cameras or will politicians simply
> ignore the facts and press ahead?
It has been shown by traffic engineers that American
speed limits are set too low. The rule they use is
the 85% rule - the average speed of 85% of the traffic
is the best speed. By definition, in fact, as it there-
fore guarantees that cops only have to deal with the 15%
of the population who will not drive reasonably and
prudently. This rule-of-thumb has been shown useful
again and again. Yet the US persists in restricting
speeds to 55 or 65 miles an hour. According to many
traffic engineer studies, this results in 75%(+/- a
small number, I don't recall) offenders, far more than
police can handle. Have the speed limits been raised
to recommended levels? They have not. 75% offender
rates are great for bringing in the fines. And
those tickets also mean insurance companies can raise
your rates, even though they know perfectly well a moving
violation has no effect on your probability of a
claim. So, why the obstinacy? Could it be because every
municipality in the country is trying to get photocops
installed everywhere? Do they reduce accidents? No.
But they are great for revenue - as long as you get rid
of that "punishing the transgresser" nonsense and just
assume the registered owner of the violating car is guilty.
Guilty until proven innocent is so much more efficient.
Especially when there is no amount of proof that will
satisfy a traffic court judge that anyone is innocent.
And then we have red-light cameras. Again, traffic
engineers have pointed out - many times - that
extending the yellow light to 4 seconds and making it
consistent for all traffic lights does, indeed,
make red-light intersections safer. So do we do that?
We do not. Rather, we put up a red light camera, and
then we shorten the yellows to push up the take.
And does this make intersections safer? No, in fact the
accident rate doubles, and in some instances triples,
almost all of them, predictably, rear-end collisions.
And, I hardly dare to point out, this, again, requires
eliminating "innocent until proven guilty" and making
the registered owner responsible.
Oh, sure, the registered owner can finger the real culprit
- who is most often their spouse, but hey, it's a tort law,
so it's okay to stress and strain a marriage for the sake
of that fine.
So they all ride the gravy train, and we all pay. We pay
in money for fines and insurance rate increases, we pay in
time, as if commute distances aren't already ridiculous.
We pay in aggravation, which either damages relations with
other people or which will corrode your arteries faster than
any amount of Ben and Jerry's best. And, finally, we pay
with our lives because all of this is very profitable
for the gov't, but it causes accidents, lots of them, and
people get badly hurt or killed in such accidents -
entirely preventable accidents - every day. Think of that
when you pass one of those crosses set up by the side of the
road, and remember that money was more important to the gov't
than the life of that person, someone's son, daughter, spouse,
sibling, friend. The $$$ are more important.
So will we wind up in George Orwell's nightmare here? With
the current mania for gov't spying on Americans I'd say it's
all but guaranteed. But if there is a way to use the system
to catch jaywalkers, parking violations, right-of-way rules,
inattentive wandering between lanes while sipping one's latte,
well, you can bet we'll see those cameras - everywhere.
Freedom. Liberty. Rights. None of these can stand up to
paranoia or the almighty dollar.
No great quantity of scientific evidence either (Score:5, Interesting)
I lived in what was considered the roughest area of the city and at a community council meeting, where some residents were a) demanding camera surveillance and b) drawing comparisons between how they were treated and the how more affluent areas of the city were treated, I suggested that we not only have the cameras but they could pipe it in to all our TV's and we then would could all see who the criminals were. It was roundly applauded, but we never did get the cameras.
Where I live now in South Germany, there are very few cameras apart from traffic control, you can drink for almost 24 hours a day and I have never witnessed street violence on par with my native country. You can drive your car at almost any speed you want on the Autobhan and Germany has the lowest level of Road Traffic Accidents per kilometre in the world - if you are like me tootling along in your truck at a snail's pace of 110 kph and stream of cars pass you with after-burners blazing at + 200 kph, this sounds rather surprising but it is true. If you do speed in the restricted areas and are caught on camera, you can request the photo. The photo is always a full frontal of you in the car with your face clearly visible. Some kids wave and legend has it, they get fined extra for lack of respect. My partner was hilariously caught speeding in a 15kph (!) zone, doing 20 and her employers presented her with the snap.
When I lived in Miami, I couldn't help but be impressed by how quiet the bars were and how friendly the Miami people were - and it's a party town, the bars are pretty wild. Both South Germany and Florida are dynamic economies and trading hubs. Scotland is neither or more accurately, there is less money in the economy. Florida has concealed gun laws and even the poorest South German has a remarkably high standard of living. In Switzerland almost everyone has a gun and for the purposes of civil defence were compelled to have one, and to generalise, they are fairly well off, have almost no crime and no cameras. Now I won't for a moment claim that my observation are anything other than anecdotal, but I also cannot help noticing the paucity of valid evidence either way. So I might dare to suggest that crime fighting cameras have more to do with poor economic performance - which is subject to the market and difficult to affect - and the symbolic effect they have on the electorate - and for that reason we might be looking in the wrong place for the evidence that either supports or demolishes the argument.
Re:Could this be an effective argument... (Score:4, Funny)
What do you think?
Re:Could this be an effective argument... (Score:5, Funny)
Is that a rhetorical question?
Re:Nothing to do with crime (Score:5, Interesting)