A UK-based CCTV installation company has called on the Home Office to make CCTV mandatory in all new businesses and homes.
The startling plea is based on evidence taken from the Home Office’s 2012 Commercial Victimisation Survey. A spokesperson for cctv.co.uk, which set up a petition to the Home Office (so far signed by ten people), said:
The installation of CCTV cameras should be mandatory in all new domestic and commercial premises. Just like the pro-active care initiatives in the NHS — deterring crime before it happens and setting new standards in CCTV footage will lead to huge savings for the Police long-term.
The website goes on to claim that if video surveillance was installed properly as standard then estates and industrial areas with camera coverage would become “virtual no-go” areas for criminals, and that such an initiative would also “bring down the fear of crime” in the public.
Crime ‘epidemic’ myth
The company also claims that crime in the UK is at “epidemic levels” despite the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics estimating that crime in England and Wales in the year ending June 2013 has fallen by 7% and is now the lowest in the history of the annual crime survey, which has been carried out every year since 1981.
The Home Office’s crime against businesses survey was published at the start of 2013, based on interviews of 4,017 business premises in the manufacturing, wholesale and retail, transportation and storage, and accommodation and food industry sectors.
Across all four sectors there were an estimated 9.2 million crimes, which works out at a staggering 15.5 incidents for every business premises in England and Wales. However the majority of these (4.1 million) were shoplifting incidents, carried out in premises that are typically equipped with video surveillance. cctv.co.uk asserts that fitting video surveillance cameras in homes and business as standard will virtually pay for itself as the cost of policing falls, but this would appear to be untrue, given that the Home Office continues to explain that 47% of all crime against business is theft by customers, with an average cost of just GB pound 35.
When a video surveillance distributor calls for mandatory installations of video surveillance eyebrows are always likely to be raised, but to additionally try to justify this with flawed representations of crime figures seems reckless. In addition, the Government’s stance on video surveillance has been made clear in the past 12 months with the new CCTV Commissioner stating that they are seeking a culture of “surveillance by consent.” With this in mind, it would surely never back a call for mandatory video surveillance.
However, it’s an interesting question. What do you think? Should new business and housing developments be covered by surveillance as standard?
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