World

CCTV Boom Fails To Slash Crime

by moonwolf | May 13, 2008 at 08:24 am | 276 views | 3 comments | 14 recommendations

As western governments increase spending into the billions on video monitoring of ordinary citizens in public places and extol the crime fighting prowess of CCTV technology, the evidence from Britain seems clear that all we are doing is giving up our privacy and tax dollars, and that criminal behavior continues with virtually no impact from the technology.

Massive investment in CCTV cameras to prevent crime in the UK has failed to have a significant impact, despite billions of pounds spent on the new technology, a senior police officer piloting a new database has warned. Only 3% of street robberies in London were solved using CCTV images, despite the fact that Britain has more security cameras than any other country in Europe.

The warning comes from the head of the Visual Images, Identifications and Detections Office (Viido) at New Scotland Yard as the force launches a series of initiatives to try to boost conviction rates using CCTV evidence. They include:

· A new database of images which is expected to use technology developed by the sports advertising industry to track and identify offenders.

· Putting images of suspects in muggings, rape and robbery cases out on the internet from next month.

· Building a national CCTV database, incorporating pictures of convicted offenders as well as unidentified suspects. The plans for this have been drawn up, but are on hold while the technology required to carry out automated searches is refined.