Neil Hopcroft

A digital misfit

Why surveillance cameras don’t reduce crime

This post is part of a discussion between pro and anti cctv camera people…but it raises a point which worries me: “cameras target only the most stupid criminals, for a while”. My worry is that we’re effectively selectively breeding criminals to be more clever….now, in an ideal world clever people don’t have to be criminals because they’re able to turn their cleverness to things which are useful to society, and get paid enough to not need/want to be criminal. We don’t live in an ideal society.


Categories: Memories.

/ 4 Comments

4 comments

  1. lsur

    in an ideal world clever people don’t have to be criminals

    That’s the problem. I’ve come across a few ‘clever’ people who have gone off the rails one way or another. Thinking about it, quite a few seem to be Cambridge graduates….

    Reply
  2. neilhudson

    But any kind of crime fighting method ought to breed criminals to be clever by this argument. The fact, for example, that mobile phones can pinpoint your position and are easily tapped ought to stop criminals and terrorists from using them. But they keep using them. So much for the crime gene.

    Reply
    • neilh

      They /can/ pinpoint, generally they /don’t/ pinpoint. It is unusual to go to the effort of doing that kind of tracking, because it is expensive and a lot of faff.

      I guess those of criminal intent tend to go for the low hanging fruit, so the way to escape being targetted is not to hang low, have enough security to take yourself out of their list of obvious targets. Of course, go too far and you become a challenge for those in it for the intellectual thrill.

      Maybe there comes a point where the cleverness needed to be a (successful) criminal is enough that they are all clever enough to hold down fairly reasonable jobs.

      Reply

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