CCTV – Does it work?

CCTV plays a huge role in helping us investigate serious crime. We live in a country with over 5.9 million cameras in a city where we’re captured on film 300 times a day.

We live in a country with over 5.9 million cameras in a city where we’re captured on film 300 times a day. But the big question is do cameras work? Critics claim the overall impact is insignificant, but other parties such as Lord Falconer of the Home Office insist that cameras have a hugely significant impact on crime levels so which view is right?

According to Professor Laycock , the director of Criminal Science at University College London, they both are. It depends entirely on what they’re used for and whether they’re properly maintained, she says;

“When used overtly they work well as a deterrent…but if they are placed high on a pole so they only capture the tops of people’s heads or if they’re out of focus they’re less than useless.”

In 1993 CCTV footage was pivotal in identifying Jamie Bulger’s abductors but in 2002 when police were searching for Milly Dowler’s killer, vital evidence was missed due to ineffective cameras so it does seem to be crucially dependent on the quality of the CCTV system.

Richard Edwards, crime correspondent for the Telegraph, revealed that in a recent investigation into the use of CCTV;

“In 90 murder cases over a one year period, CCTV was used in 86 investigations, and senior officers said it helped to solve 65 cases by capturing the murder itself or tracking the movements of the suspects before or after the attack. In a third of cases a good quality still image was taken from the footage which witnesses identified as the killer.”

The Neo Nazi nail bomber, David Copeland, who killed 3 and injured 70 more at the Admiral Duncan pub in Soho back in 1999 was apprehended when a neighbour recognized him from a still image taken from the CCTV footage. He was captured the same evening and was later sentenced to six life sentences at Broadmoor. And in the same year CCTV footage was used to investigate Jill Dando’s final movements before her murder.

So while many civil rights campaigners protest that cameras are ineffective and infringe our human rights, it seems that the majority of Criminologists, the Home Office and the Met Police all agree they work as a tool in the reduction of crime.

“CCTV plays a huge role in helping us investigate serious crime” – Commander Simon Foy of Scotland Yard.

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