Surveillance

CCTV ineffective at crime detection: researcher

By Kelly Ng | 8 June 2009

End-users make bold claims about their million-dollar surveillance systems, but we need to get real about the abilities of CCTV to detect crime. So says Helene Wells, Research Officer, Crime and Misconduct Commission, Queensland, Australia.

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Wells shared her findings from a recent report on the operation and management of the Gold Coast’s CCTV systems at the FutureCCTV Forum in Singapore. Her research involved spending 100 hours in the control room.

Of the 181 incidents surveilled in that 100 hours, 55 per cent were the result of police alerting CCTV operators to the incident, so that they could zoom in on the incident. Of 51 arrests made, only seven were the result of detection of an incident by a CCTV operator.

Wells said that while she recognised the benefits of CCTV in investigating crime – the London bombers for example – but she questioned the effectiveness of CCTV as a detection tool. If real-time monitoring does not have real consequences, perhaps city authorities would get better return on investment by concentrating on investigative surveillance technologies rather than manpower to monitor live feeds.

“CCTV is one tool in our surveillance tool box. CCTV may be the one we use most often, but it must be complemented with other surveillance devices,” she said.