NCJ Number
181217
Journal
British Journal of Criminology Volume: 38 Issue: 3 Dated: Summer 1998 Pages: 404-428
Date Published
1998
Length
25 pages
Annotation
Interviews with 30 offenders in Airdrie, Scotland, in April and May 1996 gathered information on their attitudes toward closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras in town and city centers and toward reoffending.
Abstract
The study resulted from recognition that the presence of CCTV cameras has increased enormously in the past few years, mostly with Great Britain Home Office or Scottish Office support. However, analysis of their effectiveness in preventing crime is infrequent and usually relies on comparisons of reported crime and victimization rates before and after camera installation. It is difficult for this approach to address convincingly the possibility of camera-induced crime displacement. This research sought to determining offender attitudes toward the cameras. Airdrie had one of the first CCTV programs in Scotland. The 30 offenders were mostly on probation or doing community service at the time of the interviews. They ranged in age from 16 to 41 years. Twenty-seven were male; 3 were female. Most of the offenders had been involved in the sort of fairly trivial public order offenses that town-center CCTV cameras can expect to film. Most offenders were from poor areas and were trapped in low or nonexistent earned incomes. However, few, if any, clear patterns of opinions emerged. Instead, what was more remarkable was the broad diversity of positive and negative opinions regarding CCTV and their responses to it. This diversity served to defy any obvious or common sense categorization of offender reaction to CCTV surveillance. Footnotes and 29 references (Author abstract modified)