Measure type: Surveillance

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Measure: surveillance

Surveillance is the monitoring of the behavior, activities, or other changing information, usually of people for the purpose of influencing, managing, directing, or protecting.[1]

Monitoring of traffic is a related activity which can be used for general traffic management or incident management.

Description

CCTV

Monitoring with the help of cameras (CCTV) has become a common method throughout all Europe to combat crime and terrorism. In the UK more than 4 million cameras have been installed (The Associated Press, 2007).

Essential conditions

Requirements to the urban environment

Effectiveness

CCTV

Effectiveness of CCTV:

  • Empirical research finds that the overall crime rates drop in the areas with CCTV, but not in all cases and situations. Furthermore, crimes committed in the heat of the momen, such as assaults are in general not affected by the presence of cameras.
  • Total costs of CCTV far exceed that of the camera hardware alone
  • To be effective, surveillance systems should be fully integrated into law enforcement practices

Side effects

  • CCTV and the displacement effect

Situational crime prevention measures such as camera surveillance are subject of displacement effects. A UK-study (2009)[2] tested this thesis based on national evaluations and concludes that spatial displacement of crime due to camera surveillance does occue, but not in a frequent and uniform way.

Footnotes and references

  1. wikipedia:Surveillance
  2. Waples, S., M. Gill, and P. Fisher (2009). Does CCTV displace crime? Sage Publications.

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