Doubts raised over using CCTV cameras

By Lindy Kerin

Posted Wed May 7, 2008 10:16am AEST

Criminologists in Australia agree that millions of dollars are being wasted on CCTV cameras. (Getty Images: Bill Pugliano)
A top British police officer has thrown serious doubts about closed circuit television or CCTV cameras as an effective tool in crime prevention.

Detective Chief Inspector Mike Neville, who leads Scotland Yard's Visual Images, Identifications and Detections Office says despite billions of dollars being spent on CCTV networks, they have failed to reduce crime.

Speaking at the Security Document World Conference in London, Detective Chief Inspector Mike Neville said only 3 per cent of London's street robberies had been solved using CCTV images.

He says no thought has gone into how the police should use the images from more than 4 million cameras in Britain.

He described the system as an "utter fiasco".

Criminologists here in Australia agree, saying millions of dollars are being wasted.

Deputy Chief Constable Graeme Gerrard from the Chief Police Officers Association (CPOA) told the BBC it is difficult to track down criminals caught on CCTV.

"If you recover fingerprints or DNA, you can match it against national databases," he said.

"There is no national database of images of people. So whilst we might have the images, the difficulty we then have is trying to identify who it is and sometimes that isn't easy and clearly we can do better."

Evidence

In Australia, there has been an explosion of CCTV systems.

They have been installed near ATMs, shopping centres and public transport systems, in capital cities as well as suburban and rural areas.

Criminologist Professor Paul Wilson from Bond University in Queensland has conducted one of Australia's largest studies of CCTV.

He found the systems do little to prevent crime or catch offenders

"I think the evidence is very clear," he said.

"Certainly from the study that we have done on CCTV, that CCTV is not very good at preventing crime.

"It does detect crime partly because it picks up more crime that is going on, but as a preventative device, it is not particularly effective.

"It can work as a device to detect criminals in some cases but often the images are not very clear and do not provide material which is good enough to detect or even prosecute people who have committed crimes."

Professor Wilson says despite the evidence, CCTV systems are still being installed around the country.

He says it is an expensive system to set up and maintain.

"I think it's a great tragedy that Australian politicians at the local and state and federal level believe that crime and terrorism and antisocial activity generally, can be stopped by having more and more CCTV cameras," Professor Wilson said.

"The evidence is very clear that it can't be and what we're doing is pouring literally millions of dollars of taxpayers' money into a crime prevention technique which only has very limited results and ignoring other methods of reducing crime.