It takes 1,000 cameras to solve only one crime

If there is one thing that England is known for it is it Big Brother attitude about watching every move made by its citizens. In London alone there are more than a million cameras that has cost the government £500 million.

So what are the results from all this surveillance?

Well according to Detective Chief Inspector Mick Neville, a senor Scotland Yard officer, in an internal report out of all the crimes committed in 2008 only 1,000 were solved with the help of CCTV camera. He also wrote that CCTV only played a role in capturing just eight out of 269 suspected robbers in one month. This would seem to match up with an early report form the Home Office that cameras have had only a “modest impact” on reducing crime.

David Davis, the former shadow home secretary said it is ”entirely unsurprising” that the report highlights some shortcomings of CCTV.

”It should provoke a major and long overdue rethink on where the Home Office crime prevention budget is being spent,” he said.

”CCTV leads to massive expense and minimum effectiveness. It creates a huge intrusion on privacy, yet provides little or no improvement in security.

”The Metropolitan Police has been extraordinarily slow to act to deal with the ineffectiveness of CCTV, something true both in London and across the country.”

Source: Telegraph :: One crime solved for every 1,000 CCTV cameras, senior officer claims

It would be interesting to see if this kind of effectiveness, or lack of it, that CCTV has had in other countries employing them.