Crime and crime prevention

With Britain being one of the most watched nations in the world with roughly over 1.85 million cameras in the UK and approximately one CCTV camera for 32 people. People are becoming more suspicious to what is actually private to them and what members of the public are being filmed doing, especially when they are caught on CCTV about 300 times a day . With all of these cameras Britain should be one of the safest countries in the world but fails to reach even the top 10!

With so many cameras there are multiple advantages to a CCTV controlled nation. Although the UK isn’t the safest the police however are very good at finding the criminals. With so much CCTV police are able to watch the footage and find out what they did and what they look like. This ability makes polices job a lot easier on finding who did it

 Other advantages would be for private owners. If people are curious to what happens on their property such as farmers land, they have the ability to have surveillance on their ground and see what happens.

Another major advantage is how it has the ability to reduce bullying, underage drinking or drug taking. To have 24 hour live surveillance footage means whoever controls the CCTV can call the police to search the parks and maybe stop violent behaviour while it is happening.

With the internet growing and Google maps becoming such a big thing police are now able to create maps online showing where crime hotspots are and what crimes have been committed there. These maps help police stop crime by patrolling specific areas making it a much safer place. Another great thing about these maps is that they help the public with house buying. Public are able to go onto the maps and see where the crime hotspots are around the area they plan to buy in.

With crime being committed every day and more people getting caught by police, they are now able to create databases for each criminal including their crimes, thumbprint and personal details. With this information they can narrow down their suspects and even know who it is first time they look at the crime scene.  Even without having their information on the database they are able to estimate what the suspect looks like and even what age they are. They have the ability to do this by looking at DNA and working out where they have come from.

Although all these are great advantages however they all have their drawbacks. With CCTV being so imminent in the UK people have increasingly less privacy and there would always be someone who has the ability to watch people.

Another drawback is the use of maps and crime geography. With the ability to search your area for crime towns and cities are being downgraded due to crime. Towns are now being thought of worse than they were because the public are now able to see what happens and then judge the place on that alone.

With DNA profiling becoming more widely used peoples DNA is being tracked and collected. The public have very little choice in if the police can keep the information and this creates controversy.