LawMeme LawMeme Yale Law School  
LawMeme
Search LawMeme [ Advanced Search ]
 
 
 
 
Illumination Better Than Cameras For Crime Prevention
Posted by Ernest Miller on Friday, August 16 @ 09:26:28 EDT Privacy
The BBC News looks at a new report from the British government that has determined that video surveillance, aka CCTV, is not as useful in the fight against crime as was previously thought (CCTV 'not a crime deterrent'). After studying nearly two dozen UK and US CCTV programs, the study can only concude that "CCTV reduces crime to a small degree." According to the BBC, "A second report on the impact of street lighting considered 13 schemes, and concluded that better illumination could be a cheap way of cutting illegal activity, especially in crime hotspots."

It is not that video surveillance can't be useful in certain locations and situations, but "crime-prevention" schemes that recommend placing surveillance cameras everywhere in public says more about government officials' desire to invade the public's privacy then their desire to reduce crime. One might also note how expensive these systems are. The UK is spending 75% of its crime prevention funds on a program that only reduces crime to a small degree. Doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. Not that this hasn't been pointed out before (again from the BBC) (CCTV 'fails to reduce crime'). [via Zem: Weblog]

 
Login
Nickname

Password

Don't have an account yet? You can create one. As registered user you have some advantages like theme manager, comments configuration and post comments with your name.
Related Links
· BBC News
· CCTV 'not a crime deterrent'
· CCTV 'fails to reduce crime'
· Zem: Weblog
· More about Privacy
· News by Ernest Miller


Most read story about Privacy:
Protecting Your Online Privacy – Right!

Article Rating
Average Score: 0
Votes: 0

Please take a second and vote for this article:

Bad
Regular
Good
Very Good
Excellent


Options

Printer Friendly Page  Printer Friendly Page

Send to a Friend  Send to a Friend
"User's Login" | Login/Create an Account | 1 comment
Threshold
  
The comments are owned by the poster. We aren't responsible for their content.
Crime-Reducing Illumination or just Light Pollution? (Score: 1)
by anthony_dipierro on Friday, August 16 @ 13:23:06 EDT
(User Info | Send a Message) http://slashdotsucks.com/
Was there a study done to see whether illumination would actually reduce crime? "Criminologists at the University of Maryland conducted an extensive study presented to Congress, called 'Preventing Crime, What Works, What Doesn't, What's Promising.' They concluded that 'the effectiveness of lighting is unknown.'" - http://icole.home.att.net/wpost_ltr.htm. See also http://www.idautah.org/ordinances/OutdoorLightingAndCrime-Australia2000.PDF


[ Reply to This ]


Leges humanae nascuntur, vivunt, moriuntur
Human laws are born, live, and die


All stories, comments and submissions copyright their respective posters.
Everything Else Copyright (c) 2002 by the Information Society Project.
This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Open Publication License, v1.0 or later (the latest version is presently available at http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/).

You can syndicate our news using the file backend.php