Many people say that news related to crimes is seen on newspapers or TV every day. A lot of crimes take place even in your town and you would be a victim of crimes such as a robbery, burglary and murder. To protect our safety from danger and to solve crimes, a lot of CCTV cameras have been set up in our society recently. They are seen in many places, for instance, high streets, car parks and transportations. According to The Independent (2008), “you could be caught on CCTV cameras 300 times in a day.” It is widely believed that monitoring has brought about a lot of positive effects to our society. However, monitoring system in UK has some problems. The Guardian (2008) said that only 3% of street robberies in London were solved by CCTV in spite of spending billions of pounds on a surveillance industry. Telegraph (2007) reported that the majority of UK monitoring cameras are breaking the privacy guidelines such as commissioner’s code of practice and the Data Protection Act. In this essay, I would like to review recent research into the monitoring society concerning how CCTV effects on our daily life and then consider the importance of monitoring.
It is often argued that CCTV cameras are working well to reduce and solve crimes. Thanks to surveillance, a lot of crime reduction has been reported. However, the statistics may be fantasy. According to Welsh and Farrington (2002), “CCTV had no effect on crimes of violence, but a significant impact on vehicle crime(Martin Gill and Angela Spriggs, 2005).” In fact, after CCTV was introduced in Dover Council, public disorder and crimes of violence had almost trebled, though car crime went down 87% (The Independent, 2008). Crime may be displaced somewhere without monitoring because cameras are usually seen in only high value commercial area. In addition, it is sometimes pointed out that CCTV camera was switched off, did not have a film in it and was pointing in the wrong direction. As a result of this, the way of using CCTV may be worth of consideration.
References
Andy McSmith, 2008, ‘The Big Question: Are CCTV cameras a waste of money in the fight against crime?’, The Independent, 7 May, viewed 7 August 2008, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/the-big-question-are-cctv-cameras-a-waste-of-money-in-the-fight-against-crime-822079.html
Martin Gill and Angela Spriggs, 2005, Assessing the impact of CCTV, Home Office Research, Development and Statistics, viewed 8 August 2008, http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs05/hors292.pdf
Owen Bowcott, 2008, ‘CCTV boom has failed to slash crime, say police’, The Guardian, 6 May, viewed 7 August 2008, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/may/06/ukcrime1
Tim Hall, 2007, ‘Majority of UK's CCTV cameras 'are illegal'’, Telegraph, 2 June, viewed 7 August,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1553090/Majority-of-UK%27s-CCTV-cameras-%27are-illegal%27.html
Welsh, B. and Farrington, D., 2002, Crime Prevention Effects of Closed Circuit Television: A
Systematic Review, Home Office Research Study, no.252, London: HMSO.
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