• Skip to content
  • Skip to footer
  • Accessibility options
University of Brighton
  • About us
  • Business and
    employers
  • Alumni and
    supporters
  • For
    students
  • For
    staff
  • Accessibility
    options
Open menu
Home
Home
  • Close
  • Study here
    • Meet us
    • Open days
    • Virtual tours
    • Upcoming events
    • Applicant days
    • Meet us in your country
    • Chat to our students
    • Ask us a question
    • Order a prospectus
    • Our campuses
    • Our four campuses
    • Accommodation options
    • Our halls
    • Helping you find a home
    • What you can study
    • Find a course
    • Full A-Z course list
    • Explore our subjects
    • Our academic departments
    • How to study with us
    • Undergraduate application process
    • Postgraduate application process
    • International student application process
    • Apprenticeships
    • Applying through Clearing
    • Transfer from another university
    • Fees and financial support
    • Undergraduate finance
    • Postgraduate finance
    • Our funding and support options
    • Supporting you
    • Your wellbeing
    • Student support and guidance tutors
    • Study skills support
    • Careers and employability
  • Research
    • Research and knowledge exchange
    • Research and knowledge exchange organisation
    • The Global Challenges
    • Centres of Research Excellence (COREs)
    • Research Excellence Groups (REGs)
    • Our research database
    • Information for business
    • Community University Partnership Programme (CUPP)
    • Postgraduate research degrees
    • PhD research disciplines and programmes
    • PhD funding opportunities and studentships
    • How to apply for your PhD
    • Research environment
    • Investing in research careers
    • Strategic plan
    • Research concordat
    • News, events, publications and films
    • Featured research and knowledge exchange projects
    • Research and knowledge exchange news
    • Inaugural lectures
    • Research and knowledge exchange publications and films
    • Academic staff search
  • About us
  • Business and employers
  • Alumni, supporters and giving
  • Current students
  • Staff
  • Accessibility
Search our site
Research-project-banner
Research and knowledge exchange
  • Postgraduate research degrees
  • Research features
  • Research organisation
  • Research environment
  • Groups
    • Groups
    • Applied geosciences
    • Built environment
    • Biomaterials and Drug Delivery
    • Brighton and Sussex Medicines Optimisation
    • Chemistry
    • Stress, ageing and disease
    • Ecosystems and environmental management
    • Education
    • Environment and public health
    • Healthcare Practice and Rehabilitation
    • Interdisciplinary Management and Higher Education
    • Management and Employment
    • Mathematics, Statistics and Operations
    • Musculoskeletal
    • Nuclear physics
    • Past human and environment dynamics
    • Paediatrics
    • Product design
    • Sensory neuroscience
    • Social Science Policy
    • Society space and environment
    • Sport and Exercise Science and Medicine
    • Sport, Tourism and Leisure
    • Sustainability and Resilience Engineering
    • Transforming sexuality and gender
    • Values and sustainability
  • Social Science Policy
    • Social Science Policy
    • Research impact
    • Research areas
    • Research projects
    • Collaborations
    • Events
    • About us
  • Research projects
    • Research projects
    • Collaborative Poetics
    • "I will tell you something of my own"
    • Project page
    • Designing healthy prisons for women
    • Making a meal of collaborative learning
    • Material traces
    • Older people: care and self-funding experiences
    • Rehabilitation by design: Influencing change in prisoner behaviour
    • Researching discrimination through poetry: Developing a method of collaborative poetics
    • Resilience and friendships
    • Monitoring, evaluation and impact: Making data work for communities
    • Aesthetics of protest: Visual culture and communication in Turkey
    • Anti-social behaviour enforcement action and young people
    • Brighton Citizens' Health Services Survey
    • Carer Information and Support Programme (CrISP)
    • CCTV: Lessons from a surveillance culture
    • Cheers!
    • Connected Communities projects
    • Dance and dementia
    • Disruption: unlocking low carbon travel
    • Domestic abuse and LGBT people
    • Domestic elder abuse in Japan and England
    • Domestic fire safety evaluation
    • East Sussex carers' break
    • Electronic Patient Records (EPR) evaluation
    • EmERGE
    • ENSUE
    • Fairness in Brighton and Hove: an analysis of public voice
    • Health Trainers in West Sussex
    • Information for healthy living
    • LifeLines
    • Live well with dementia evaluation
    • Mobile phone app for HIV patients
    • Neutralising deviance
    • Older people and human rights
    • Older people wellbeing and participation
    • Older people with sight loss in care homes
    • Older people's experiences of online and offline communities
    • Prison architecture design and technology
    • Protest networks and the Pitchford inquiry
    • Responding to child to parent violence
    • Section 136 in Sussex
    • Service user and practitioner experiences of community treatment orders (CTOs)
    • The Brighton systems knowledge exchange project
    • The problem of personal debt and mental health
    • Social factors, care and Community Treatment Orders (CTOs)
    • Working towards prevention
    • Writing the landscape of everyday life
  • CCTV: Lessons from a surveillance culture

CCTV: Lessons from a surveillance culture

We were invited by the European Forum for Urban Safety (EFUS) to provide an overview of research lessons regarding CCTV effectiveness, based on our extensive evidence gleaned from eight evaluation projects and EPSRC-funded research. This pan-European initiative was tasked with creating a European Charter for CCTV project development and use. 

Project timeframe

This research took place in 2010.

Project aims

The project aimed to:

  • share invaluable learning from the experience of CCTV surveillance in the UK with other nations, including reflections on whether legal and political oversight have kept pace with the scale of deployment.
  • explore the effectiveness of CCTV in terms of solving public area crime and disorder problems and the key role of evaluation
  • improve the process of policy transfer, develop better practice and clarify issues pertaining to CCTV deployment, ensuring evidence-led policy development.

Project findings and impact

Research was able to emphasise the importance of oversight, monitoring and the effective integration into other community safety strategies and policing systems. It warned against treating CCTV as a ‘magic bullet’ and stressed that it was a tool rather than a cure-all. The complex and varied roles and purposes of CCTV systems: intelligence development, incident management, order maintenance were acknowledged in addition to the desire for situational crime reduction, via prevention or deterrence.

Our report, Evaluating CCTV: Lessons from a Surveillance Culture, helped underpin the European CCTV Charter and was incorporated into the supporting EFUS documentation when the charter was formally launched in Rotterdam. Many members of the EFUS partnership have adopted the EU charter.

Research team

Professor Peter Squires

Output

Paper Prepared for the Final Conference of the European Forum for Urban Safety: Citizens, Cities and Video-Surveillance Programme and for the EFUS CCTV Charter launched in Rotterdam, May 2010

Partners

Back to top
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • TikTok
  • YouTube
  • LinkedIn icon

Contact us

University of Brighton
Mithras House
Lewes Road
Brighton
BN2 4AT

Main switchboard 01273 600900

Course enquiries

Sign up for updates

University contacts

Report a problem with this page

Quick links Quick links

  • Courses
  • Open days
  • Order a prospectus
  • Academic departments
  • Academic staff
  • Professional services departments
  • Jobs
  • Privacy and cookie policy
  • Accessibility statement
  • Libraries
  • Term dates
  • Maps
  • Graduation
  • Site information
  • Online shop
  • COVID-19
  • The Student Contract

Information for Information for

  • Current students
  • International students
  • Media/press
  • Careers advisers/teachers
  • Parents/carers
  • Business/employers
  • Alumni/supporters
  • Suppliers
  • Local residents