All these fact have been taken from a Wired Investigation in Wired Magazine (http://www.wired.co.uk), May 10th, by Heather Brooke
Not sure where I stand with copyright, but I’m just reproducing the facts here, and I don’t think you can copyright facts: Wired (http://www.wired.co.uk) is the most interesting magazine on the market, and it’s an excellent article from Heather, I recommend you go find it :/
The UK has more CCTV cameras per capita than any other European country yet figures released by the European Commission and United Nations showed Britain’s recorded rate of violent crime surpassed any other country in Europe.
A trebling of investment in local cctv has coincided with negligible impact on reducing crime
Falkirk Council in Scotland spends more than £16,000 per camera in the initial outlay. Add to this the costs of regular support, control room costs, staff, tapes, storage facilities, recording and monitoring software and retrofitting and replacing hardware/software.
Moray Council spends £10,000 per camera
Mid-Lothian £100,000
Edinburgh City £25,000
Edinburgh currently has 185 public cameras at an estimated £4.6 million – not counting monitoring, retrofitting and replacement.
Wandsworth in London has 1,113 cameras at an estimated cost of £22 million – the equivalent of 1,100 Police Officers at a starting salary of £20k.
The maintenance of Wandsworth’s control room is estimated to be between £350,000 and £400,000.
According to the CCTV Users Group the City of London (619 cameras) will have invested more than £12 million setting tem up and then £2.25 million a year to maintain them.
Freedom of Information request from the Liberal Democrats revealed that London’s cctv cameras have cost taxpayers £200 million in the last decade.
A House of Lords report published in January 2010 estimated that during the 1990′s the Home Office spent 78% of its crime-prevention funds (est to be in excess of £500 million) on cctv. Once they’ve bee setup the costs of support and maintenance falls on local budgets (council, police etc).
In 1991 : 5 local authorities had public space cameras
In 1994 : John Major announced the fist of four phases of investment in cctv – the initial cost being £20million
In 1996 : 167 local authorities had surveillance equipment
In 1997 : Labour Government announced a £170 million grant for cctv, followed by another £153 million distributed between 1999 and March 2002
There is little or no data to affirm their effectiveness in fighting crime
Whilst money comes from central government to implement these systems, the cost of running, maintaining, supporting and upgrading these systems is not.
Shetland Island Council has 101 cameras
Corby Borough Council has 90 cameras
San Francisco Police 71 cameras.
(Stating the obvious that means that Shetland has more cctv cameras than San Francisco)
The City of London’s 619 cctv cameras is more than the combined total of police cameras in Boston, Johannesburg and Dublin
In 2009 detective chief insepctor Mick Neville, head of the Met’s Visual Images, Identifications and DEtections Office revealed that only 3% of the capital’s street robbers are solved using sercurty camera footage.
