CCTV, the bane of the libertarian and the tool of the authoritarian. It is a misunderstood beast, with many claiming it to be "surveillance" in to our lives that is unnecessary, and others (mainly the government) trying to point out the benefit to society that they bring. All in all it's a classic case of at least feeling as if our rights are being infringed on even if necessarily they aren't.

In the recent days it has been reported that a high level police officer feels that CCTV has been oversold to us and that it isn't the solution it was meant to be. In fact he goes on to talk about how CCTV can't deter crime unless people know and care about it's existence, stating...

Even the presence of police officers doesn't deter the disorder on the street, so cameras are unlikely to deter them.

One blogger on CentreRight takes it a step further however and claims that far from it being drunken louts that are going to do what they do regardless of what is there to "deter" them, it is in fact the justice system that is to blame.

Now excuse me while I just try and shore something up here. The head of CCTV in the association of chief police officers thinks that the technology isn't working because not enough people respect or know the camera's are there while our friend at Centre Right believes that people commit crime still because of "soft sentencing". Both of them, to my mind, are completely off base.

Firstly why is CCTV being used as a deterrent all of a sudden as if that is it's primary purpose? To me a CCTV camera should be used to help the police catch the perpetrators of crime. A camera is essentially no different than putting a policeman in a high vantage point with a pair of binoculars and a radio, assuming said police officer has a photographic amazing memory. It offers the ability to show evidence of someone committing a crime in no uncertain terms, at least it would if the technology used wasn't so cheap or non-existent that getting a conviction through the use of such images would be a fantasy.

When CCTV first started popping up me and my mates, young as we were, would get worried about drinking alcohol in the streets (this was pre-yob days, no stigma back then) as there were two or three CCTV camera's around. The trouble is that rumour soon got around that the camera's didn't actually film anything, or if they did they weren't good enough to actually see who you were from where they were placed. As such, we stopped worrying and unfortunately so did more of the truly anti-social. The fact the government has almost made it a strategic aim to follow this kind of thinking in making CCTV appear to be useless, by not showing how useful and frequent it is in solving and preventing crime, only goes to show the main reason why drunken people at night actually get away with their behaviour. A strong CCTV system in our towns and cities that actually recorded what people were doing enough to punish them for it would be much more succesful in driving down levels of this problem.

Unfortunately such things can't be done if you subscribe to the CentreRight bloggers diagnosis that the country is too soft. Without using community sentencing to shame and inconvenience "yobbish" behaviour that goes too far, and without the fines to hit them where it counts hardest, you'd be simply sending too many people to prison to learn nothing on short term sentences and develop the wrong kind of outlook on life while mingling with the wrong types of people.

CCTV is only useful if it is involved in the process of actually catching criminals of any level and helping convict them, any other holistic use for crime fighting is a false economy that could be spent on more police and better policing. It is also only useful if actually used with the right punishment to fit the crime, not criminalising irrational and "instinctive" behaviour that doesn't warrant prison time and instead driving a real combat against unacceptable behaviour in partnership with community sentences. To blame the lack of their effect on anything other than a poor strategic vision for their use, or a lack of proper resources to use them in their intended function, is an absurd waste of time.