Reasons Why Cctv In Kent And London Is Worthwhile

The CCTV User Group recently released a report on the August 2011 Riots and the effectiveness

of CCTV, in which it was demonstrated that because of the successful police operations following the recent civil unrest in England 'the real effectiveness of public area CCTV can be shown in such indisputable ways to the Government, the Local Authorities, the media and the public'

Over two weeks after the first incidents in August, the Metropolitan Police had identified 3,296 criminal incidents pertaining to the riots and had made 2,006 arrests. They charged over 1,135 people based on recordings from public area CCTV cameras and also their own 'body worn' cameras.

Such a positive end result could not have been reached without this CCTV and police camera video clips, along with the endless work of the police back office staff.

In the public area CCTV control rooms specialist CCTV operators would have controlled the cameras onto the individual incidents to not only give an overview to enable police co-ordination at the time but, where possible, to acquire identification quality pictures for future prosecution.

It is because of the capacity to do this that CCTV is of great worth worldwide.

There have been several national press articles arguing that CCTV is not an effective tool in standing up to crime, such as "CCTV Boom Has Failed to Slash Crime, say Police" trilled the Guardian, whilst the Telegraph followed up with "1000 CCTV Cameras to Solve One Crime Met Police Admits" and The Times chimed in with "CCTV Images Offer No Help In Solving Crimes".

Even with that, as Matthew Griffiths' reports in his 'Town Centre CCTV: An Examination of Crime Reduction in Gillingham, Kent', after CCTV was brought in for some towns in Kent, those using it did see sizeable drops in crime statistics compared to towns without CCTV.

Griffiths surmises that 'CCTV can successfully reduce offences such as shoplifting and vehicle crimes and therefore can be perceived as a good thing' and adds that 'it is best utilised in conjunction with other crime prevention measures, media publicity and the continued support of the Police'.

The difficulty is that Local Authorities who finance and manage the vast majority of the public area CCTV systems in the UK, are under acute budget pressures and as CCTV is not a statutory duty for them, as opposed to education or social services for example, it can be an easy target for cutbacks.

Throughout the country cuts are being squeezed through to cope in the on-going recession. It would be sad if that is what it will take in order to see the true value of CCTV in Kent?

by: matthf8tpo

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