SEEN AND NOW HEARD - TALKING TO THE TARGETS OF OPEN STREET CCTV

The presence of closed circuit television cameras (CCTV) in town and c ity centres, mostly with Home Office or Scottish Office support, has g rown enormously in the past few years. Analysis of their effectiveness in preventing crime is infrequent, and then usually relies only on co mparing police recorded or otherwise reported criminal victimization r ates before and after camera installation. It is difficult for this ap proach to tackle convincingly the possibility of camera-induced crime displacement. This article tries an alternative approach to displaceme nt: asking offenders. To test the efficacy of the approach, an area wh ose criminal statistical profile had previously been studied intensely -Airdrie, a smalt town near Glasgow which has one of the first CCTV sc hemes to be installed in Scotland-was revisited. Thirty offenders (mos t were then on probation or doing community service) were interviewed and their attitudes to the cameras and to reoffending recorded. Few, i f any, clear patterns emerged. Indeed, what is more remarkable is the rich and broad diversity of views, which, in turn, serve to defy any o bvious or common-sense categorization of offender reaction to CCTV sur veillance.