The Adoption of CCTV Technology in the UK and Its Effectiveness in Crime Prevention
Why has the United Kingdom adopted CCTV technology with such enthusiasm and how effective is it as a means of crime prevention?
During the previous era, the spread of closed circuit televisions (CCTV) in United Kingdom has been increased in an obvious trend. £38 million has been proved by the British Home office in order to build up local surveillance systems before 1994. What is more, during 1995 to 1999, £170 million has been made accessible to enhance this system (Phillips, 1999, p. 123). According to John Burn-Murdoch (2012), the crime statistics from the police office shows that the crime rate is gradually decreasing in the last decade. This is because the United Kingdom is now full of CCTV which have been installed in airports, underground, universities, car parks, attractions and so on. This is aiming for reducing the anti-social behavior and crake down some crimes, by monitoring and recording the evidence of crime collected by CCTV. Even though people probably will be monitored when they just walk out their house as the huge amount of CCTV are installed in everywhere. However, this raises another issue of invading personal privacy which will be mentioning afterwards. This paper reviews studies that have appraised the reasons for raising the number of CCTV in legal, political and fiscal aspects, as well as the effectiveness of how CCTV works as preventing crime and evaluation of the effectiveness of CCTV.
The enthusiasm for CCTV is because it acts as the extensive guard and police surveillance. CCTV can be installed in many places, nearly pervasively in the city. It operates 24 hours a day, just like a robot eye above people and does not need to rest. Deterring and detecting the offenders are the main functions of the CCTV. People tend to see only the existing of CCTV and believe it would work perfectly itself, rather than its actual result being displayed. This shows the blind trust of the CCTV abilities of controlling crime (Beck and
During the previous era, the spread of closed circuit televisions (CCTV) in United Kingdom has been increased in an obvious trend. £38 million has been proved by the British Home office in order to build up local surveillance systems before 1994. What is more, during 1995 to 1999, £170 million has been made accessible to enhance this system (Phillips, 1999, p. 123). According to John Burn-Murdoch (2012), the crime statistics from the police office shows that the crime rate is gradually decreasing in the last decade. This is because the United Kingdom is now full of CCTV which have been installed in airports, underground, universities, car parks, attractions and so on. This is aiming for reducing the anti-social behavior and crake down some crimes, by monitoring and recording the evidence of crime collected by CCTV. Even though people probably will be monitored when they just walk out their house as the huge amount of CCTV are installed in everywhere. However, this raises another issue of invading personal privacy which will be mentioning afterwards. This paper reviews studies that have appraised the reasons for raising the number of CCTV in legal, political and fiscal aspects, as well as the effectiveness of how CCTV works as preventing crime and evaluation of the effectiveness of CCTV.
The enthusiasm for CCTV is because it acts as the extensive guard and police surveillance. CCTV can be installed in many places, nearly pervasively in the city. It operates 24 hours a day, just like a robot eye above people and does not need to rest. Deterring and detecting the offenders are the main functions of the CCTV. People tend to see only the existing of CCTV and believe it would work perfectly itself, rather than its actual result being displayed. This shows the blind trust of the CCTV abilities of controlling crime (Beck and