It is assumed that cameras will not prevent any crime, but will help solve it. In London, at least, this assumption doesn’t seem to be true anymore. London has spent about £200 (close to 300 million Euros) installing 10.000 CCTV cameras. The overall result of this investment is a decreased proportion of crime solved, not increased. There hardly seems to be a relation between the number of cameras and the proportion of crime solved.
- There are now 10,524 CCTV cameras in 32 London boroughs funded with Home Office grants totalling about £200million.
- Hackney has the most cameras - 1,484 - and has a better-than-average clearup rate of 22.2 per cent.
- Wandsworth has 993 cameras, Tower Hamlets, 824, Greenwich, 747 and Lewisham 730, but police in all four boroughs fail to reach the average 21 per cent crime clear-up rate for London.
- By contrast, boroughs such as Kensington and Chelsea, Sutton and Waltham Forest have fewer than 100 cameras each yet they still have clear-up rates of around 20 per cent.
- Police in Sutton have one of the highest clear-ups with 25 per cent.
- Brent police have the highest clear-up rate, with 25.9 per cent of crimes solved in 2006-07, even though the borough has only 164 cameras. cameras.
Link via boingboing.
Tags: crime, I told you, photos, privacy, security
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