Crime and the City

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Abstract
Britain has seen very substantial public and private investment in open-street closed circuit television surveillance in the 1990s. Part of the justification for this has been the assumed ability of CCTV to reduce both crime and the fear of crime. Recorded crime increased in Glasgow after CCTV was installed there. This paper reports the result of a major survey of crime fear levels experienced by locally resident visitors to a city centre both before and after that installation, and compares their responses to those given by locally resident visitors to two control locations. There is majority support for the installation of open-street CCTV, and a majority thought CCTV would make them feel safer. However, when actual, as opposed to prospective, feelings of safety are compared over time, there is no improvement after installation of CCTV cameras. Further, respondents believe that CCTV is better than the police at detecting crime, but that police patrolling are more effective than CCTV in making people feel safer. One way of interpreting this is to suggest that Glaswegians, along with many sociologists, prefer‘natural’ to‘electronic’ surveillance.

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