[Editor's note: John Honovich publishes this and other information on
network video at IPVideoMarket.info.]

While we continue to spend more on public CCTV systems, the debate on CCTV effectiveness has reached a polarizing and inconclusive standoff. On the one side, you have a number of studies and leading thinkers who cleary contend that CCTV systems are ineffective. On the other, you have numerous municipalities who are weekly green-lighting new CCTV projects.

This report offers key findings from the 20 top studies/articles in the field and offers practical recommendations on how to optimize the use of public CCTV systems.

A directory of the 20 top papers in the field are included at the end of this document. This report is based on those papers.

Key Findings Summary

• The expectation that CCTV systems should be deployed to reduce crime rather than solve crime has created huge problems.
• While the studies show serious doubt on CCTV's ability to reduce crime generally, a strong consensus exists in CCTV's ability to reduce premeditative/property crime
• CCTV is consistently treated as a singular, stable technology, obscuring radical technological changes that have occurred in the last 10 years
• Differences in per camera costs are largely ignored, preventing policy makers from finding ways to reduce costs
• Routine comparison of police vs cameras is counterproductive

Practical Recommendations Summary

• Stop claiming that CCTV can generally reduce crime
• Optimize future public CCTV projects around crime solving rather than crime reduction
• Optimize future public CCTV projects around material and premeditative crimes
• Target technologies that support crime solving and material/premeditative crimes
• Focus on minimizing cost per camera

Finding: Crime Reduction vs Crime Solving

The overwhelming majority of studies focus on analyzing CCTV's ability to reduce crime. The general approach is to take current crime statistics for a region and compare those statistics to the period after installation of CCTV. A number of techniques are used to adjust to control for general changes in crime and to track displacement or diffusion of benefits to other areas. Nevertheless, the focus of all quantitative analysis has been on reducing crime.