The use of CCTV to police public spaces : a case of big brother or big friend? I (original) (raw)
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Closed circuit television (CCTV) camera systems are rapidly becoming a taken-for-granted element of the British urban landscape. Increasingly, such systems are being seen as a new and cost-effective part of the local policy'tool kit'for dealing with a range of urban problemscutting crime, improving consumer and business confidence in town centres, and underpinning the economic competitiveness of urban areas in the UK.
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Modern societies are consistently characterized as surveillance societies by scholars from numerous academic disciplines. The UK is frequently cited as the world leader in CCTV surveillance. This paper seeks to examine and discuss three bodies of literature related to UK CCTV surveillance. Firstly the development of CCTV in the UK is surveyed, in addition to the legislation currently governing CCTV usage. UK CCTV surveillance is also compared to a number of European counterparts, as comparison is vital to surveillance studies. Secondly, some theoretical models of surveillance will be surveyed. As the most consistently discussed theoretical model, the panopticon as described by Foucault will be the primary focus, with others serving either to challenge or compliment this model. This exploration of the theoretical literature will help to frame the remaining discussion. Thirdly the challenges that CCTV surveillance actually poses to issues such as privacy, civil liberties, and social equality will be explored. Building on theory from the second chapter, concepts such as social sorting will illustrate how visual surveillance threatens democratic life in the UK. Some issues obstructing public debate about UK CCTV will then be discussed, as it is frequently argued that CCTV policy both should, and will, be shaped by public opinion. This paper will conclude with some general comments on the findings of this research, as well as some suggestions for future work in this field.
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This paper examines data from an observation study of four CCTV control rooms in Norway and Denmark. The paper asks whether issues other than privacy might be at stake when public spaces are placed under video surveillance. Starting with a discussion of what values public spaces produce for society and for citizens and then examining CCTV practices in terms of those values, we find that video surveillance might have both positive and negative effects on key 'products' of public spaces. We are especially concerned with potential effects on social cohesion. If CCTV encourages broad participation and interaction in public spaces, for instance by increasing citizens' sense of safety, then CCTV may enhance social cohesion. But the discriminatory practices we observed may have the opposite effect by excluding whole categories of the populace from public spaces, thus ghettoizing those spaces and hampering social interactions. Though tentative due to limited data, our analysis indicates that structural properties of CCTV operations may affect the extent of discriminatory practices that occur. We suggest that these properties may therefore present 'handles' by which CCTV practices can be regulated to avoid negative effects on social cohesion.
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One of the most visible interactions of place and high-technology communications systems over the past 10 years has been the installation of Closed Circuit Television (CCTV). Designed to improve the economic fortunes of public, commercial street systems, such technologies are so widespread that it has been estimated that the average UK urban resident is now monitored more than 300 times a day, making Britain the most visually surveilled nation on Earth (Norris & Armstrong, 1999).
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