Police claims that cameras help with crime clear up not bourne out
- 18/8/2008
NO-CCTV finds the CCTV plot
Earlier this year senior Police admitted to the House of Lords Constitution Committee that CCTV is not effective at deterring crime. Instead they claimed that: "The principal measure of effectiveness as far as the Police Service is concerned is in relation to the support of the investigative proces". The only problem they said was that there is little research with regard to CCTV as an investigative tool. Of course there is a mountain of evidence that shows what they had to admit, namely that CCTV does not reduce crime.
The Police are effectively saying "Okay we said it would reduce crime, but the figures show it doesn't, so instead we are now saying it helps in solving crime - and as there are no figures on that you'll have to trust us, after all we're the police. We need more CCTV, lots more."
Except there are figures. Last year the London Assembly obtained figures for the number of cameras vs crime clear up rates accross the 32 London Boroughs. These figures show that increasing the number of cameras does not increase the crime clear up rate. Basically, there is NO linear dependence between the number of cameras and percentage of crime clear-up in London, where there are over 10,000 state run cameras.
No CCTV has produced a graph showing the non-relationship between cameras and crime clear up rate. See here.
Posted in cctv general - 18/8/2008
