LONDON LETTER:Covert surveillance is widespread and popular in Britain, but police statistics call into question CCTV's effectiveness
THE OUTER Hebrides in Scotland are somewhere one might think one would go for privacy, but the 26,000 people who live there are among the most-watched by CCTV cameras anywhere in the United Kingdom.
The local council has erected more than eight surveillance cameras per 1,000 residents there, even if 80 of the cameras monitor what is happening daily on the islands’ schools.
In Croydon in south London, the authorities have installed CCTV cameras in private homes linked by wireless to a control centre to monitor unruly behaviour taking places in public areas on their doorsteps.
So far, Croydon Council refuses to say where the house cameras have been put up, but it insists that it will erect more in homes if the pilot programme, which began in November, is deemed a success.
Croydon likes CCTV. The council has 77 fixed-cameras, three wireless ones and a CCTV van that can be moved as needed, all monitored by a control room that operates seven days a week, 24 hours a day.
Privacy campaigners have been outraged by the house CCTV pilot, but local residents seem more keen. Kirenna Chin (30) said: “Louts use my hedge as a bouncy castle and urinate in my front garden. It’s very intimidating. It’s a fantastic idea to fit hidden CCTV.”
Ann Hamblett (61) said: “We’ve got yobs trying to put massive boulders behind our car, and throwing oil over my daughter’s windscreen. It’s making our lives miserable. The cameras are a good idea.”
Such covert surveillance is regulated by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act of 2000 – which was introduced to cover investigations into everything from anti-terrorism to benefit fraud.
Ten years ago, over 400 local councils operated 21,000 CCTV cameras.
Today, that number stands at just under 60,000, but this is only a fraction of the total in use daily in the UK.
In all, over four million cameras are believed to exist, including everything from private security companies to ones over a shop-till.
London is said to have one for every eight people. Some people are filmed 300 times a day.
While largely approved of by a public fearful of crime, the cameras, according to a 2005 Home Office report, had “a negligible effect” on crime rates in the 13 areas which the report’s authors inquired into.
Encouraged by government money, few of the councils saw any need to demonstrate why CCTV would work: “After all, why would the government be giving out money for this and not other measures if it did not,” the report said.
The House of Lords also has doubts, with one of its committees saying that money that might otherwise have gone on better street-lighting and community policing is now going, instead, on cameras.
Meanwhile, the Metropolitan Police and other UK forces have admitted recently that the number of investigations helped by CCTV has fallen sharply since 2003, though they put that down to changes in the way statistics are managed.
Back then, the Met said CCTV “was involved” in the investigation of 418,000 crimes of all descriptions throughout the capital, whereas by last year the number had fallen by 71 per cent to 121,000.
In Humberside, the number of crimes captured on film by the cameras dropped from 1,583 five years ago to 1,114 in 2008-’09, a year when local police had to respond to nearly 90,000 recorded crimes.
Scotland Yard privately says that the fall is explainable. In 2003, police had listed CCTV as a factor in the investigation if there was one “in the vicinity of a crime scene”. Today, they do so only if it formed part of the investigation.
Opponents of CCTV, such as Big Brother Watch, argue that the £250 million spent running the systems could be better spent, and that the images produced by the cameras are often so poor as to be unusable in court.
However, the sum is but a fraction of the £10 billion spent annually on policing in England and Wales and the criticisms made about picture quality can more legitimately be directed at private security systems in shops.
The Local Government Association, a Whitehall lobbying group which speaks on behalf of councils throughout England and Wales, points out that the public “consistently tell councils they want additional CCTV installed because it makes them feel safer.
“There is clear evidence from independent studies that CCTV deters crimes such as burglary, and it was footage from these cameras which helped bring the failed July 21st London bombers to justice,” it said.
Now, CCTV is ready to move on, with London firm Internet Eye’s decision to offer £1,000 a month to the best crime spotter prepared to sit and watch live CCTV footage streamed on the web from shops, et cetera. Ten thousand people have already signed up.