Glasgow City's cameras - hype or help?

Jason Ditton, who led the Scottish Office funded research team, asks did the open-street CCTV system reduce crime and the fear of crime?

The short answer to both is no.

At least, we couldn't find any improvement in either when we compared figures for the years before the cameras were turned on in late 1994 with those from the first year of operation.

First, crime. Earlier we researched open-street CCTV in Airdrie, found a 21 per cent fall in crime, and an 8 per cent improvement in the clear-up rate (how many crimes are "solved") in the two years after their cameras were switched on.

We expected a similar success story in Glasgow's city centre. But it didn't. True, the number of crimes fell in 1995, the first year of the cameras. But they had been falling for a couple of years anyway. And although they fell again in 1995, the number of crimes fell much more everywhere else.

If we take the rate of fall elsewhere as a baseline, Glasgow's smaller fall actually looks more like a 9 per cent rise. Gloomier still, the clear-up rate worsened by 4 per cent.

Not a good start, especially when the police were confidently predicting the cameras would "eliminate crime" there.

They were also supposed to cut fear of crime. But they didn't do that either.

We conducted massive street surveys before and after they were installed. The people we spoke to thought they would feel safer when the cameras became operational, thought they would use the city more, and thought the cameras would reduce crime and catch criminals.

But when we talked to another big sample after the cameras had been operating for over a year, most didn't feel any safer and more said they would avoid the city centre.

Why haven't the cameras "worked"?

This is where exasperation sets in. My view is because the cameras were so over-hyped as a miracle cure before they were turned on, their chances of real success were non-existent.

And, believe it or not, as well as eliminating crime and fear of crime, the cameras were also supposed to increase annual inward investment to the city by £43 million a year, generate 1500 new jobs, and bring an additional 225,000 visitors each year.

A tall order for 32 cameras being watched by a couple of operators!

When we checked, we found the cameras were only linked to 209 arrests in the first year. This is one arrest per camera every 40 days, and no more than 5 per cent of the crimes in the city centre in the whole year.

But we not only expect too many things of the cameras, we expect contradictory ones.

Take the celebrated occasion when operators saw two young men, late at night, brutally attacking another young man outside a night club. The operators acted swiftly, got police and emergency services there, probably saved a life and definitely secured a couple of convictions. Photographic stills from the video of this attack regularly appear in newspapers, and have been televised around the world.

Great! The operators deserve credit. But what has this done to increase inward investment, or reassure Glaswegians that the city centre is safe?

Or look at it another way. The cameras are supposed to see and prevent crime. If they see more crime, then crime will increase. If they prevent it, crime will go down. Which is supposed to happen? Maybe Glasgow was just better at the first than the second.

So an increase in crime doesn't mean that the cameras shouldn't be there. Actually, they are developing a useful minor role by watching likely robbery sites such as ATMs and bus queues, and in the retrospective investigation of serious crimes.

But if shorn of their apparent magical general qualities, we might begin to question whether or not we want the police secretly to video-tape us in public.

If we do, we might wonder if a little more democratic control over how they do it is an even better idea.

Jason Ditton is Professor of Criminology in the Law Faculty at Sheffield University, and Director of the Scottish Centre for Criminology in Glasgow.