CCTV surveillance for crime prevention

• Author: Eric L. Piza,Brandon C. Welsh,Amanda L. Thomas,David P. Farrington
• Date: 01 February 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12419
• Published date: 01 February 2019

DOI: 10.1111/1745-9133.12419

RESEARCH ARTICLE

CCTV SURVEILLANCE FOR CRIME PREVENTION

CCTV surveillance for crime prevention

A 40-year systematic review with meta-analysis

Eric L. Piza1Brandon C. Welsh2David P. Farrington3

Amanda L. Thomas1

1John Jay College of Criminal Justice

2Northeastern University, Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement

3Cambridge University

Correspondence

Eric L. Piza, John JayCollege of Criminal

Justice,Depar tment of Criminal Justice, City

Universityof New York,524 West 59th Street,

HaarenHall 636.15, New York, NY 10019.

Email:epiza@jjay.cuny.edu

Thisproject was made possible by funding

fromthe Swedish National Council for Crime

Preventionto Cambridge University. We thank

EditorWilliam Bales, Senior Editor Meghan

Hollis-Peel,and the anonymous reviewers for

their insightful comments.

Research Summary: We report on the findings of an

updated systematic review and meta-analysis of the effects

of closed-circuit television (CCTV) surveillance cameras

on crime. The findings show that CCTV is associated with

a significant and modest decrease in crime. The largest

and most consistent effects of CCTV were observed in

car parks. The results of the analysis also demonstrated

evidence of significant crime reductions within other set-

tings, particularly residential areas. CCTV schemes incor-

porating active monitoring generated largereffect sizes than

did passive systems. Schemes deploying multiple interven-

tions alongside CCTV generated larger effect sizes than did

schemes deploying single or no other interventions along-

side CCTV.

Policy Implications: The results of this systematic

review—based on 40 years of evaluation research—lend

support for the continued use of CCTV to prevent crime

as well as reveal a greater understanding of some of the

key mechanisms of effective use. Of particular salience is

the continued need for CCTV to be narrowly targeted on

vehicle crimes and property crime and not be deployed

as a “stand-alone” crime prevention measure. As CCTV

surveillance continues to expand its reach in both public

Criminology & Public Policy. 2019;18:135–159. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/capp © 2019 American Society of Criminology 135

136 PIZA ET AL.

and private space and evolve with new technology, policy

will benefit from high-quality evaluations of outcomes and

implementation.

KEYWORDS

closed-circuit television (CCTV), crime prevention, meta-analysis,

surveillance, systematic review

1INTRODUCTION

In recent decades, closed-circuit television (CCTV) surveillance has emerged as a mainstream crime

prevention measure used around the world. Its rise can be traced to Great Britain, where three quarters

of the Home Office budget was allocated to CCTV-related projects from 1996 to 1998 (Armitage,

2002). Such policy decisions increased dramatically the number of CCTV systems in Britain, from

approximately 100 in 1990 (Armitage, 2002) to more than four million less than two decades later

(Farrington, Gill, Waples, & Argomaniz, 2007). In the past decade, cities throughout the United States

have likewise made substantial investments in CCTV. According to the most recent estimates, 49%

of local police departments in the United States report using CCTV, with usage increasing to 87%

for agencies serving jurisdictions with populations of 250,000 or more (Reaves, 2015). The increased

prevalence of surveillance cameras in public places has led scholars to consider CCTV as a “banal

good” that has become part of everyday life, taken-for-granted by the public and subjected to little

scrutiny by the media (Goold, Loader, & Thumala, 2013; Greenberg & Hier, 2009; Hier, 2010; Hier,

Greenberg, Walby, & Lett, 2007).

During the early expansion of CCTV, many scholars attributed the marked and sustained growth of

this technology to political motivation and public enthusiasm. Painter and Tilley (1999: 2) argued that

CCTV's rise in Britain was a result of the “surface plausibility” of the measure and of the political

benefits officials expected from “being seen to be doing something visible to widespread concerns

over crime.” Pease (1999: 53) further lamented that policy makers seemingly did not readily consult

the scientific evidence when considering the adoption of CCTV, stating that “one is tempted to ask

where rigorous standards went into the headlong rush to CCTV deployment.”

Although research on CCTV was once sparse, the state of the literature can no longer be described

as such. The number of CCTV evaluations has increased significantly over time. Furthermore, even

though public surveillance research in general has been previously described as “methodologically

weak,” with more than 55% of studies having less than a comparable experimental-control area

design (Welsh, Peel, Farrington, Elffers, & Braga, 2011), rigorous designs have been increasingly

used in the study of CCTV. We now have several examples of randomized field trials testing the

effect of video surveillance cameras as a stand-alone crime deterrent (Hayes & Downs, 2011; La

Vigne & Lowry, 2011) or as part of proactive place-based patrol strategies (Piza, Caplan, Kennedy,

& Gilchrist, 2015). Others have used sophisticated matching techniques in the absence of random-

ization to help ensure statistical equivalence between treatment and control conditions (Farrington,

Bennett & Welsh, 2007; Piza, 2018a). Researchers have also taken advantage of opportunities

afforded by naturally occurring social occurrences to reduce problems of endogeneity, when the

allocation of CCTV is correlated with unobserved factors that determine crime (Alexandrie, 2017).

This increased rigor of the CCTV literature has offered far more insight to help guide policy and

practice.