‘CCTV’ is a widely used generic term to denote the use of video surveillance cameras and systems in public places, where camera technology is linked in ‘real-time’ to a control room in which monitoring and surveillance takes place, usually by human operatives. A typical system consists of a number of cameras linked through a dedicated information and communication network, or ‘closed circuit’, to a centre containing the technical capability for displaying, storing, retrieving and reviewing the images captured by the cameras. The CCTV systems of interest here are those located in ‘public places’, where the public have free and unhindered access, and where the systems are financed and operated by public agencies. Theses systems are of particular interest because they are being introduced for the ‘benefit of society’ and because their use must be publicly accountable. Such systems are distinct from the myriad of privately operated systems found in shops, banks, petrol stations and other ‘private’
locations.
Since the mid 1990s the UK has undergone a surveillance revolution, a revolution that has swept the nation with limited resistance. The rapid deployment of CCTV in this period has been noted by a number of authors, and in particular, Bulos and Sarno [2], Fyfe and Bannister [3], Goodwin et al [4], Graham [5], Graham et al [6], Norris and Armstrong [1], Norris et al [7] and Webster [8, 9, 10, 11, 12]. CCTV systems have been introduced into a wide range of public places, including, town and city centers, schools, hospitals, libraries, car parks, and in residential and rural areas [8, 9, 10, 11, 12]. Norris et al argue that there are now over 4 million CCTV cameras in public places across the UK [13], and go so far as to state that Britain is the most heavily surveyed country in the world [1]. In general, these systems have been installed because there is a widespread belief that they can help ‘prevent and detect crime, and offer the public reassurance against the rising fear of crime’ [14:3]. Moreover, the apparent success of CCTV in reducing crime and the fear of crime, has led to remarkable levels of support for CCTV amongst politicians, public agencies, the general public and the media. The extent of this support has paved the way for an unprecedented speed of uptake; CCTV is without doubt a phenomenon of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
2.1. The law and order context of the revolution
The law and order context for the introduction of CCTV in the 1990s was dominated by the rapid rise in crime levels and the subsequent political importance of the ‘fight against crime’ (FOC). Although the basic components of CCTV had been around since the 1970s, the political law and order climate in the 1970s and 1980s retarded its development as a mass surveillance tool. However, the rapid rise in crime levels in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the growth of ‘proactive intelligence led policing’, and the search for technological solutions to crime problems, combined to create a climate in
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which politicians were willing to consider new initiatives, which demonstrated to a concerned public, that they were tackling crime, disorder and the FOC. Early evaluations of trial systems showed a massive fall in crime rates and a massive increase in detection rates, suggesting CCTV could represent a vital breakthrough in the fight against crime [15].
In 1993, the tragic death of Jamie Bulger dramatically launched CCTV into public consciousness. Although CCTV had not saved the toddler, it was clear that the fuzzy images contributed to the identification of the killers and the process of abduction.
Furthermore, the initial success of CCTV as a crime reduction tool was presented as enhancing citizens’ rights to personal protection, safety and freedom of movement.
The populist rhetoric, ‘if you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear’, dominated to such an extent that even civil liberties groups did not oppose CCTV, but merely argued for its statutory regulation [16, 17]. By the mid 1990’s CCTV had become a central part of the government’s law and order policy.
2.2. The emergence of a formal closed circuit television policy
In 1994, CCTV emerged as a formal policy when the then Home Secretary, Michael Howard, announced the availability of £2 million to fund new CCTV surveillance systems [18]. The Home Office’s Crime Prevention Agency Unit and the Scottish Office’s Crime Prevention Unit funded the provision of CCTV through annual ‘CCTV Challenge Competitions’. These ‘competitions’ contributed up to 50% of the capital costs of new schemes, but only where it could be demonstrated that there was a need for CCTV, where ‘community partners’ included the local authority and police force, and where the majority of capital costs were paid for by private businesses. The competitions also required bids for funding to demonstrate how the future running costs would be met, that a code of practice concerning the use of cameras existed, and that appropriate evaluation procedures were in place. Home and Scottish Office statistics (summarized in [11]) show that the challenge competitions distributed approximately £40 million to nearly 700 new schemes across the UK. The significance of this funding is noted by Goodwin et al, ‘the extent of Home Office backing for and reliance on CCTV is indicated by the fact that…78% of the Home Office budget for crime prevention was being used to fund schemes to put CCTV in public places’ [4:3].
After the election of New Labour the CCTV Challenge Competition was replaced by the ‘CCTV Initiative’ [19]. This initiative formed part of the Crime Reduction Programme announced in 1998 and was managed jointly by the Home Office, The Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions and the National Assembly for Wales. Under the CCTV Initiative, £153 million was made available for CCTV in England and Wales. A separate ‘Make Our Communities Safer’ Challenge Competition operated in Scotland. The initiative differed from the earlier challenge competitions in three key respects. Firstly, funding was available on a rolling ‘first come first served basis’, secondly, the initiative funded up to 100% of capital costs, and thirdly, the initiative was explicit in targeting new system in residential and community areas [19].
The Home Office and Scottish Office backed up financial assistance with policy and operational guidance. Both have published detailed policy guidance documents providing advice on the location, design and operation of CCTV [14, 20]. These documents were intended to give potential operators access to basic knowledge about the technology and a plan of how best to proceed in installing the most appropriate
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system. Also, the ‘Application Prospectus’ for the CCTV Initiative sets out the types of bid and system that were likely to be awarded funding [19], whilst the Home Office’s Police Scientific Development Branch (PSDB) published a range of materials covering the technical issues of CCTV operation [21]. Interestingly, the proliferation of cameras has not been accompanied by specific legislation restricting and controlling their use [12]. Instead CCTV falls under generic legislation such as the Data Protection Act 1998, the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. The CCTV policy arena is largely self-regulated through voluntary codes of best practice, including the Data Protection Commissioners ‘CCTV Code of Practice’ [22].
Although these codes are designed to safeguard civil liberties and govern the use of systems they are not legally enforceable and differ considerably in content [23].
2.3. Creating the myth: CCTV works
One notable feature of the CCTV revolution is the extent to which the introduction of CCTV appears to have widespread public support [6, 8, 9, 10]. Part of the explanation for this, is a general belief that the cameras work in preventing, detecting and deterring crime. CCTV has been promoted against this belief and marketed to the general public as a ‘state-of-the-art’ technological tool to combat crime. Norris and Armstrong argue,
‘there is a common assumption: CCTV actually produces the effects claimed for it…an unquestioning belief in the power of the technology’ [1:9]. Public perception surveys, such as those conducted for the Home Office [24, 25], by independent academics [26]
and for prospective operators [4, 27], show clearly that the public believes CCTV to be a highly effective tool and that civil liberties are not a major concern. For example, the earliest independent public attitude survey, conducted for the Home Office by Honess and Charman [24], found that between 85% and 92% of respondents welcomed the installation of CCTV in their area. The view that CCTV actually reduces crime has been widely and successfully disseminated across society, and accordingly there is widespread support for CCTV amongst politicians, policy-makers and the general public. This has been central to the government’s claim that the roll out of CCTV has been a legitimate policy.
The overwhelming support for CCTV is unquestionable and it is noticeable how little debate there has been across society, on the use and impacts of these sophisticated surveillance systems [9, 10]. The belief that CCTV ‘works’ and that society needs these systems, especially since the events of 9/11, have overridden any dissenting voices who question their effectiveness and impacts. Debates about CCTV have been led and shaped by political rhetoric which has wholeheartedly supported the technology. Consequently, public discourse has focused on the success and benefits of the cameras and not on the more complex issues associated with extending the states surveillance capabilities. Absent from any debate is any discussion about the appropriate use of CCTV, the implications of using such technology in the community, the impact on civil liberties of the surveyed, and the changing relations between citizens and the state arising from the use of CCTV [28]. Questions about whether CCTV actually reduces crime, whether displacement occurs, whether CCTV is a threat to civil liberties, and whether there should be specific legislation governing the use of CCTV are often not even asked.
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2.4. Some concerns about the revolution
The absence of public debate about the implications of using CCTV technology so widely in society is intriguing, since it is in the public who become subject to increasing levels of surveillance. Academics on the other hand, typically raise two main concerns about the proliferation of CCTV systems. Firstly, that their use signals the emergence of a ‘surveillance society’ where citizens are the subject of greater levels of surveillance and control, and secondly, that CCTV systems are not as effective in reducing crime as initially thought.
The emergence of a surveillance society [29, 30, 31, 32, 33] based on the enhanced capabilities offered by new information and communication technologies points to CCTV being essentially about power and control [34, 35], and in particular, the extent of power and control over citizens exercised by agencies of the state. In this approach CCTV represents both a threat to civil liberties and a tool of social control, perhaps even similar to ‘big brother’ in Orwell’s classic distopian novel ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’
[36]. This is because CCTV is part of the ‘architecture of conformity’, which ensures that individual citizens assume that they are constantly being surveyed and therefore internalize power and conform to socially acceptable behavior [37]. In this way the proliferation of CCTV is likened to a modern day electronic version of Bentham’s panoptic prison [1, 3, 32, 38, 39]. At the crux of this argument is that surveillance is a form of power, and this form of power has been dramatically enhanced by the development of sophisticated CCTV technology.
Alongside sociological critiques of the panoptic potential of CCTV criminologists have attempted to discover the ‘effectiveness’ of CCTV and its ability to deliver reductions in crime and disorder. Although political discourse is based on the belief that the cameras work, there is actually very little reliable evidence to support this proposition. Moreover, whilst CCTV has proliferated there have been very few systematic evaluations measuring its effectiveness [40, 41]. Here ‘effectiveness’ is usually gauged in terms of measurable reductions in levels of crime and the FOC, and improvements in detection and ‘clear-up rates’ For Short and Ditton, the early evaluations, which claimed such huge successes for CCTV, were actually inconclusive and ‘fairly contradictory regarding the effectiveness of CCTV as a crime prevention method’ [42:11].
The most recent research into the effectiveness of CCTV [43, 40, 44] suggests that it is most effective in reducing property crime and deterring offences like vehicle crime and burglary, perhaps on the basis that potential offenders perceive the risk of apprehension to outweigh the benefits. However, in crimes involving alcohol, such as public disorder, where ‘rationality’ is often lost, then the deterrent effect of CCTV is weakened. In an attempt to ascertain a clear picture of the crime reduction effects of CCTV, the Home Office commissioned a review of all CCTV evaluations considered to be methodologically sound [44]. The initial findings of this study are that CCTV has a very small, but statistically significant, reduction in crime of about 3%. More specifically, the review also suggests that CCTV appears to have no effect on violent crimes, a significant effect on vehicle crime and is most effective when used in car parks. They also suggest that CCTV is most beneficial when used in conjunction with other crime reduction measures and when its use is tailored to its local setting. So, despite the proliferation of CCTV systems in the last decade, research to date suggests that CCTV is not always as successful at reducing crime as it is claimed to be and the
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extent to which CCTV can act as an effective crime prevention measure is very much dependent upon the context in which it is applied.
Concerns over the emergence of a surveillance society and about the cameras’
ability to reduce crime raise questions about the extent of rationality in the policy process, about power relationships in the CCTV policy arena, and about the dominant discourse through which policy agendas are constructed and resolved. Why then is CCTV so popular and what is the logic of installing so many systems, if there is limited evidence that it works and if its use has largely unknown consequences for human behavior and citizen-state relations? The focus on whether CCTV works or whether it leads to a surveillance society detracts from a detailed understanding of the reasons how and why CCTV has diffused so widely across society. CCTV needs to be understood in a much wider context – if surveillance is a form of power, then CCTV surveillance systems are uniquely powerful new technologies that can contribute to social order and control. Moreover, because they are inherently associated with power and control, they are inherently ‘political’ technologies, and as such explaining the reasons for their introduction is vitally important.
3. Technological perspectives of diffusion: The diffusion and social shaping