Here’s a BBC story that came out when I was on vacation.

Only one crime was solved by each 1,000 CCTV cameras in London last year, a report into the city’s surveillance network has claimed.

The internal police report found the million-plus cameras in London rarely help catch criminals.

In one month CCTV helped capture just eight out of 269 suspected robbers. [...]

Nationwide, the government has spent £500m on CCTV cameras.

But Det Sup Michael Michael McNally, who commissioned the report, conceded more needed to be done to make the most of the investment. [...]

“There are some concerns, and that’s why we have a number of projects on-going at the moment.”

I’m not surprised by the findings. Nor am I surprised that a Home Office spokeswoman said CCTVs “help communities feel safer,” as if one should spend £500m on feeling safer rather than actually providing more security by paying for alternative crime-prevention techniques that have been proven more effective.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 10th, 2009 and is filed under Anonymity, Cameras, Identification, International, Security, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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