As we all know, crime is EVERYWHERE (for the most part). Therefore, ought not closed circuit TVs be placed throughout the country as much as possible, starting with our largest cities and then onto the smaller ones … and, perhaps ultimately, in cow pastures and along beaches and everywhere else where (evil) people can go in places public?
Soooo much crime, and so much of it of the grievous violent variety.
Crime rates are currently the lowest they’ve been in decades and continue to decrease all over the developed world. Where is all this heinous violent crime that’s happening EVERYWHERE?
It’s just my imagina-a-a-a-tion
Running away with me.
You did see what I added in parentheses, right?
There’s LOTS of crime going on all over the country as anyone can go to any online newspaper and click into their “Crime” reports if there’s any doubt about it.
I don’t know if crime is going down or not, I just know that for my own taste I’d like for there to be none whatsoever, if possible.
Btw, some might argue that what’s occurring at our southern borders is crime being committed.
No, we don’t all know. Prove it.
See my comment to friedo.
Nothing George Orwell came up with is the answer.
So you find crime if you look in the “Crime” section? And this surprises you? Maybe you should stick to the funny pages.
A laudable goal. But before we argue about solutions we should probably get our facts straight. The FBI publishes statistics about crime (violent and not) every year.
Violent crime (and in particle murder) peaked in the US in the early 1990s. In 1994, the violent crime rate per 100,000 people was 713.6. In 2013, it was 367.9. The murder rate per 100,000 people fell from 9 to 4.5 in the same time period.
Theories about why vary from the availability of legal abortions, to banning leaded gasoline (my current favorite) to better policing, to higher rates of incarceration. But it’s clear that some progress is being made, somehow.
Surveillance cameras are excellent tools for investigating crimes after they happen, and I have no particular objection to putting them in public places. But they aren’t going to prevent crimes from happening. As evidence, I offer all the examples of crimes being recorded by surveillance cameras.
(There is some evidence that cameras work as a deterrent for certain opportunistic crimes like robbery. But not all crime is opportunistic.)
If your goal is to equip the entire 2000-mile border with surveillance cameras, you’d better come up with a metric shitload of cash.
Part of this is that crime is NEWS! People get a vicarious thrill, a kind of schadenfreude, from watching reports of crime on TV and reading about it in the paper. This means that crime gets reported a lot.
It’s like the traffic reports. Did anyone ever hear a traffic report that said “There’s not much traffic about today so lets play another tune?”
Statistics in the UK show a huge upsurge in rape. This has nothing to do with the actual numbers of rapes and a lot to do with the fact that rape is taken more seriously and sensitively these days and therefore is more likely to be reported.
An Imperial shitload - surely:)
Since the OP is seeking opinions, let’s move this to IMHO (for now).
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
And it’s all happening without cameras! Because no one has ever thought to put a camera along the border! Dibbs is the first! And we have been given the unique privilege to witness this in real time!
If we only had cameras to record it!
My next door neighbor knocked on my door last week to ask if I’d mind going to the store to get him some beer. He didn’t want to go out because the night before he’d been jumped and the assailant bashed his right eye in something horribly. You may say it’s no big deal but I do, as this sort of crap is all too common.
Also, I seriously doubt that if that little kid in D.C. last week that had been tortured and then burned to death along with his family could chime in, he’d for sure side with me.
I personally don’t care for the idea of being “watched” by Big Brother every time I’d step outside, but in view of where technology is going (getting smaller and better cameras) and how there’s such a strong crime element (which so many of you seem to be used to), I’d say the question is worthy of “exploration” (to use a Koppel word) and thus I put it out there as a bone for Dopers to maul over.
Btw, as far as the “shitload of cash” you ask about goes, creating jobs via companies creating the tech involved would help pay the way as would less bucks going out to jail folks that would otherwise take a chance and try to pull something, like that dirty-rotten bastard that harmed my neighbor!
You’re being unfair to my comment, though I’m not surprised.
Okay, thanks!:o
Evidence indicates that they have not been very effective in London: http://spectrum.ieee.org/riskfactor/computing/it/londons-million-cctv-cameras-highly-ineffective-in-solving-crimes
From the article: In addition, the Met report says that increasing numbers of citizens are complaining that the police investigating a crime don’t even bother to look at the CCTV videos that do exist,
I am inclined to think we’re not quite as shabby as they are over there… hence, the technology has serious potential as long as the folks running it are doing their part.
Also, as far as I could see, the article makes no mention of the amount of crime that didn’t happen due to the cameras being in place.
Btw, thanks for the link.
Some criminals are very good at evading crime detection devices such as cameras, and even where there are cameras they often aren’t working, so they provide little value to law enforcement. We need to do a better job at protecting ourselves from criminals and avoid becoming a victim in the first place.
But my neighbor – getting an eye-socket smashed to bits – was just out walking along and was jumped from behind, as the SOB was waiting in some bushes. Why wouldn’t CCTV cameras have lessened the odds of that happening (as the bad guy would have known that he was being caught on video before and after he entered the shrubs)?
You plan on having a camera aimed at every bush and shrub in the U.S., the infrastructure to record it all and the manpower to monitor it (ideally in real time)?
That sounds like a swell idea in terms of security and jobs. The government can buy tens of millions of cameras and then hire people as security contractors to closely monitor an assigned area 24 hours a day (often just their own yard). We will all be perfectly safe AND rich. Brilliant!