10,000 Cameras Ineffective At Deterring Crime 414
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?"
The answer is... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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.
Interesting but useless (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:My first thought (Score:2, Insightful)
And they also need speakers, so when they view the live video, and they see someone commit a crime, like say, jaywalking, they can order the offender to stop and wait for a bobby to come and arrest them. Or, if they look trustworthy, to walk to the nearest police station and turn themselves in.
Of course, this is meant to be funny, but if a politician reads it, they might think it's insightful [unfortunately]...
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)
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: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.
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.
Re:The answer is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Cameras don't deter criminals. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
There's a certain presumption ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hollywood lied! (Score:4, 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.
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 are everywhere.
The only reasonable conclusion is that the cameras are not really about crime.
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.
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.
The longer, more accurate answer is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Poor analysis (Score:2, Insightful)
I was hoping to see some stats on how many crimes were solved using information from the cameras vs normal police work.
Why don't they let the public scan the stored video and look for crime? Many hands make light work.
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 high definition video...
(And no, I'm not advocating they spend another 200 million switching to hi-def - see above.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Whats their strategy? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:The answer is... (Score:1, Insightful)
Home Land Security comes to mind here, politicians spent billions of dollars to have made "progress" towards preventing another 9/11. How much of that is smoke and mirrors?
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.
Re:There's a certain presumption ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:There's a certain presumption ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not that it much matters what We the People think about the issue
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:James Bulger (Score:3, Insightful)
Bullshit. [crimelibrary.com] This case was solved relatively quickly. There were 38 witnesses. They were all called to the stand and vilified in the press as the "Liverpool 38". The police simply reached for the video first, for probably the same reason men prefer to use GPS rather than ask for directions.
I wonder what's up with those two brats. The were released six years ago and should be 24 by now. As Francis Urquhart might say, surely we can forgive a man a few youthful indiscretions...?
Better image quality needed, not physical count (Score:1, Insightful)
Better image quality is needed, not a greater physical count of cameras. If you can see a face, clothing detail, nipples through wet, white shirts, all the better. Analog CCTV has poor resolution. There will come a day.
Re:Many around here ignore facts as well ... (Score:3, Insightful)
>
average *number of* crimes != average crime
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.
Re:Cameras don't deter criminals. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:The answer is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Politicians view of what is crime might be different from yours, but there is no point in wearing a tin foil hat.
Or, more to the point, politicians view of what is acceptable to "protect the children" most likely is very different of how much "privacy" you are willing to lose.
Myself? I both love and despise the cameras. They can (and therefore will) be used for good and bad. YMMV.
Re:Same problem that surveillance has always had. (Score:3, Insightful)
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:perception & reality (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The answer is... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Many around here ignore facts as well ... (Score:3, Insightful)
In other words, it makes it easier to prove your innocence? Isn't that kind of backward?
Re:Cameras don't deter criminals. (Score:2, Insightful)
not for catching criminals, for control (Score:3, Insightful)
Typically they are "sold" to the public under the guise of fighting crime, as nobody wants to stand in the way of a murderer being subjected to justice of the people.
The real reason though is that government's largest risk of being put out of power is not criminals or foreign enemies, but their own people. By making the people feel their every move is cataloged and noted by the government, they are (by and large) made afraid to do anything their government may see as problematic, reducing government's risk of the people demonstrating, peacefully or not.
The cameras were never about fighting crime, they are there both as a panacea for the people and more importantly, a means of control.
I may sound like a tin-foil hat wearing libertarian here
Re:Seriously? Look at the war on drugs. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:not for catching criminals, for control (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Camera proponents spin it both ways (Score:3, Insightful)
So do you. Plus, the innate rights of man trump the desires of an authoritarian state.