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1. A decline in privacy is intertwined with an increase in surveillance
so as the capability for surveillance has increased the negative
impact on privacy has become a criminal justice issue.
2. Privacy and surveillance are often thought of as mutually exclusive
states, one loses privacy to the level that one is under surveillance
c. The new media based social sphere is a high visibility, high
surveillance, low regulation world
d. Standards for privacy and access are set by and large by
businesses such as Google and Apple that provide the
communication platforms and market mobile
communication devices that frame the social media based
culture
e. In this translucent new world, individuals do have some
expectation of privacy but it is fragile and
3. The unresolved issue is who owns the digital content that is created
and distributed through new media?
a. Once content is posted on the World Wide Web for
example, it is difficult to determine who has ownership
b. At this time, public concerns appear to be focused on
protections from unreasonable Government collection of
the content and many people appear willing to disclose
much of their personal information to private entities
including businesses and web surfing strangers
4. New media has diminished the historical “reasonable expectation
of privacy” standard and has replaced it with a “reasonable
expectation of distribution”
a. Most users expect privacy while their information is in
transit, but are not aware or not concerned with their lack of
control of its distribution after its delivered
ii. The use of telephone wiretaps in the 1900s first raised the specter of
surveillance abuse
1. Earl Warren and William Brandeis predicted: “mechanical devices
threaten to make good the prediction that ‘what is whispered in the
closet shall be proclaimed from the housetops’”
iii. No Western democracy has embraced police surveillance systems more
than the United Kingdom (although the U.S. is quickly catching up)
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1. The rise of surveillance capabilities increased dramatically with the
development of modern camera-based systems in the 1960s
a. CCTV (closed circuit television) was initially used both in
the U.S. and Britain sparingly as an in-store means of
apprehending and deterring shoplifters
2. Although the technology became less expensive and increased in
its capabilities throughout the 1970s, the Western political
environment remained hostile to surveillance of the general public
surveillance systems
5. Capping the social construction of police surveillance systems as
positive and necessary in England was a symbolic crime, the 1993
murder of a two-year-old boy who was recorded on a mall security
camera being taken away by his two teenage killers
a. Similarly in the U.S., symbolic crimes, usually murders,
have periodically super-charged the slow but sure
surveillance creep through society to periods of
surveillance surges
i. Once installed, logic inevitably calls for coverage of
larger areas, and every murder or terrorist act
intensifies the demand for expanded surveillance
iv. The result in England has been the normalization of police surveillance
systems
1. CCTV surveillance has been described as a public “fifth utility”
2. Driven as much by politics as by empirical evidence, United
Kingdom CCTV surveillance came to be widely perceived as an
affordable and efficient technical fix for crime and described as
equal to full-time police officers on the beat twenty-four hours all
taking notes without meal breaks, holidays, or sick leave
v. In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and passage of
the Patriot Act and related legislation the U.S. is on tack to joining
England as a massively camera-surveilled society
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vi. Two forms of camera surveillance programs (both forms take advantage of
the surveillance effect: using the psychological impact of the belief that
one might be under surveillance to influence people’s behaviors):
1. completely hidden systems that given potential offenders no
indication that they are being observed
a. More of a means of gathering evidence and aiding in
apprehensions
2. clearly marked, open systems
vii. How effective are surveillance systems in reducing crime?
1. Evidence based largely on interviews with offenders does suggest
that offenders take into account the perceived level of surveillance
and the likelihood of intervention when deciding whether to
commit some types of crimes, especially instrumental street crimes
such as car break-ins
7. However, if the threat of police intervention is absent, the impact
of surveillance fades
8. Found to significantly interact and affect the crime reduction
impact of these systems:
a. Camera placement
b. Site conditions that affect camera views
c. Pre-existing crime levels
i. Thus, within a single multi-camera system, some
cameras may have substantial impacts on some
crimes while other cameras have none or influence
different types of crimes
ii. Cameras in crime hotspots that reside in well-
designed and operationally integrated projects are
more effective crime deterrents than are widely
diffused community blanket deployments
iii. Police surveillance cameras have been shown to be
useful in a post crime investigation, less so in the
identification of suspects
iv. Even when a crime is not recorded, knowledge of
the movement of individual and vehicles prior to
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and following an incident has proven crucial in
solving a number of crimes
d. Benefits to investigations:
i. reduced costs
ii. swifter justice
iii. increases in the public’s perception of safety
j. Benefits and Concerns of Increased Surveillance
i. The concerns raised about police camera surveillance boil down to:
1. Privacy
a. the unnecessary exposure of people’s life and activities
2. Legitimacy
a. impact on civil rights and control of power in democracies
3. Efficiency
a. crime reduction and increased public safety
ii. Benefits → Concerns
1. The ability to observe and react to previously unnoticed acts →
Net-widening from police arresting more people, particularly
juveniles for minor offenses, will result in more people with formal
arrest records
2. The ability to expel actual and potential deviants from specific
locations → Profiling, polarization and radicalization will result as
certain groups are targeted for exclusion from public spaces,
especially commercial shopping districts
3. The ability to provide evidence against offenders → The
development of databases to track and identify specific members
of the population based on their prior labeling as individuals that
“need to be watched” rather than being surveilled because of their
current behavior
4. The ability to create quiet, disturbance-free streets → Over-
policing and the suppression of public exuberance and uninhibited
but lawful social or political protest and the loss of informal citizen
guardianship of neighborhoods
5. The ability to create crime-free surveillance zones →
Displacement of crime: the displacement effects will push crime
into adjacent communities without the money or political clout to
obtain their own surveillance systems
a. Has been empirically examined along with the additional
potential benefit of a diffusion of crime reduction impact
i. Diffusion of benefits: seen as a possible effect from
surveillance systems because offenders might not be
aware of the boundaries of the surveillance
coverage and therefore reduce their offenses in
adjacent nonsurveilled areas
iii. The power elite control how and when they are surveilled whereas the
poor and powerless do not
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iv. Of the concerns, displacement of crime to adjacent areas has been
empirically examined
1. As has the additional potential benefit of a diffusion of crime
reduction impact
a. Seen as a possible effect from surveillance systems because
offenders might not be aware of the boundaries of the
surveillance coverage and therefore reduce their offenses in
adjacent nonsurveilled areas
2. In the reported evaluations, evidence of both displacement and
diffusion effects have been reported
3. Recent research suggests that crime displacement may not be a
universal effect however
a. This suggests that diffusion of benefits may accrue near to
these systems while crime displacement can be
simultaneously occurring farther away
v. The recent appearance of video cameras mounted on patrol car
windshields in the U.S. represents another expanded, mobile use of video
technology for surveillance
1. No expectation of privacy in public = the almost uncontested use
of in-car video cameras by police on patrol or on fixed streetlight
mountings monitoring public streets
vi. The extension of surveillance to airborne drones has heightened the debate
1. Drones provide law enforcement the ability to surveill any part of
society not inside a structure
2. The public belief that walls and distance equals privacy is
destroyed
vii. Who gets watched is also a concern and research has suggested that
camera monitors are not particularly accurate in predicting victimization
viii. Those most often focused upon by camera operators are:
1. Young
2. Scruffy
3. Loitering males
a. This a profile that has not proven particularly effective in
maximizing crime prevention effects from these systems
ix. Resistance to greater adoption of surveillance cameras is found within law
enforcement agencies when officers perceive the cameras as an
administrative tool, installed to watch them, more than as a law
enforcement tool
1. In reality the cameras are both:
a. the police on the surveilled street, in front of their patrol
cars during a videotaped traffic stop
b. when equipped with a body camera are also under
surveillance
i. a number have lost their jobs as a result
x. Benefits of having a visual record
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1. Administrators and the courts can later review officers’ and
suspects’ actions, and thereby decide the following:
a. liability
b. voluntary search consent
c. misconduct claims
d. They can also have more credible, objective evidence of
behavior and statements for DUI and drug intoxication
cases
2. The cameras are credited with deterring:
a. suspects form resisting arrest
b. officers from mistreating suspects
c. officers from engaging in other unprofessional acts
xi. In effect, in a democratic society the technology appears to:
1. Protect police officers from frivolous charges of abuse and
misconduct
2. Protect the public from actual abuse and misconduct by officers.
xii. In addition, the ubiquitous video cameras in citizens’ hands mean that a
surveillance effect will have an impact on the police as well as on the
public
1. Research has indicated that citizen-videotaped arrests have a
significant negative impact on the public’s perception of police use
of force
a. In response, the police are advised to operate under the
premise that cameras are everywhere and that any of their
actions might be taped
xiii. A final ironic consequence of more surveillance cameras in society is their
use by offenders to provide early warnings of police raids on premises
being used for illegal practices
1. This turns the acquisition of surveillance technology into an
offender/police arms race that law enforcement is not necessarily
favored to win
k. Balancing Police Surveillance and Public Safety
i. All surveillance systems raise issues related to the role of media in the
daily policing of our society
1. Surprisingly, concerns over Big Brother are usually raised by the
news media, law enforcement officers, and external observers, not
by the citizens under surveillance, who appear quite ready to trade
off a measure of personal privacy for a potential reduction in
victimization and fear
2. The public acceptance of surveillance is high and is linked to the
new media based increased exposure of private, backstage
behaviors in the news, entertainment, and infotainment media
a. If privacy is already rare and voluntary self-surveillance is
common, then government surveillance is less offensive.
b. Since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, public support in the
U.S. for surveillance systems has been strong, with close to
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80 percent in one poll supporting the installation of
surveillance cameras in public places to prevent terrorist
attacks
ii. The social construction of the need for police camera surveillance depends
upon references to:
1. dramatic crime risks:
a. the terrorist attack
b. the predator pedophile
2. applications related to:
a. traffic control
b. school campuses
iii. Unresolved questions concern effects on the legitimacy, symbolic impact,
and the public image of justice when surveillance technology is employed
1. Public perception of law enforcement significantly determines
support for the entire criminal justice system
a. The police have a symbolic value
b. On the street, both the presence of a live police officer and
the assurance of knowing when one is being observed by
the police affirm the values of voluntary consent and public
control of law enforcement
c. Loss of these social attributes can diminish the aura of
legitimacy sustaining the entire criminal justice system
i. An unresolved concern is “function creep,” a
process in which surveillance systems are marketed
as protections against terrorism but once installed
are utilized to address mundane low level offenses
d. Misuse or overuse of surveillance will construct a social
reality of mistrust and cynicism, where fear of crime is
replaced by fear of authority
iv. In addition, use of surveillance could result in the neglect of broader
approaches to crime control
1. It is feared that reliance on technological fixes for crime can have
negative community effects such as
a. working against positive community participation
b. creating a siege mentality
c. generating social resistance to surveillance
d. undermining natural community surveillance by residents
i. Example: the presence of a police surveillance
system might result in fewer phone calls to the
police if residents assume that the local police
surveillance camera will observe incidents and alert
the authorities. Police camera surveillance may
thereby undermine natural surveillance by
encouraging people to have faith in the disembodied
electronic eye
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v. Cameras unavoidably change the nature of the relationship between those
being watched and those doing the watching
1. Most of the time, the negative social consequences of increased
surveillance dominate the debate
2. However, the latest applications have positive potentials also
a. When the actions of the law enforcers and the public are
both monitored, stored, and subject to later review,
surveillance cameras can restrain the actions of authorities
as much as offenders
i. It remains to be seen whether the impact of these
projects in democratic societies will be greater on
the police than on the public
ii. A significant effect on employees has already been
reported in correctional settings where the behavior
of both correctional officers and prisoners is
monitored
1. Like other two-edged swords, the dual
nature of police camera surveillance is
apparent
2. In the wrong hands it can invade privacy and
make Orwell’s 1984 a reality
3. But it can also, in a different political
context, be liberating and protective
4. Which reality will emerge is yet to be
determined
3. Increased fear of crime and terror results in increased tolerance for
surveillance
a. The danger is that fear will drive citizens to glibly
surrender personal privacy for an unknown measure of
personal security
b. Whether these programs actually reduce crime or protect
against terrorist attacks enough to warrant the loss in
privacy is an open question
i. They are capable of producing positive near-term
effects for certain types of crime, with vehicle-
related offenses appearing to be most effectively
deterred
c. Whether the systems can maintain effects over the long
term is not known
vi. How the power to surveill is held accountable and what limits are placed
on its operation are unresolved issues
1. The impact of new computing and database technologies will
increase the reach of surveillance— with the coupling of
surveillance cameras to fast, inexpensive computers surveillance
capabilities will include:
a. facial recognition
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b. real time vehicle and person tracking
c. behavior recognition
2. Widespread police access to a real-time, computer-analyzed,
media-augmented surveillance data will soon be common-place
3. New media technologies have made social surveillance an activity
that anyone can engage in
IV. The Brave New Media World
a. Today, the media can be used to influence people’s attitudes about crime and
make more crime-related information available to the police
i. Other uses can speed the processing of criminal cases.
ii. The technology of the media can be used to videotape police patrols,
vehicle stops, and interrogations
1. And the technology is useful in the investigation, surveillance, and
deterrence of crime
2. The administrative, mostly crime control, benefits associated with
these uses follow quickly, and projects have consistently been
evaluated as efficient and cost-effective
b. Hastening the wider use of media surveillance:
i. Increased social fears
ii. Technological advances that make the equipment:
1. more economical
2. more flexible
3. more capable
4. less obtrusive
c. There are concerns about potential social costs
i. If evidence of negative effects is found in future studies, the technological
genie will be out of the bottle, and it will be difficult to curtail established
practices
d. Media based anticrime efforts that do not include surveillance show no behavioral
effects
i. It appears doubtful that the media can by themselves deter criminal
behavior
ii. Surveillance programs do show deterrence effects, but their ability to deter
crime without displacement and other worrisome social effects remains
unproven
e. Media efforts to reduce victimization by teaching crime preventive behaviors:
i. have high recognition levels among the general public
ii. have increased public knowledge
iii. have changed public attitudes about crime prevention
iv. have not yet shown an ability to significantly change crime prevention
behavior
f. Programs designed to increase public cooperation by advertising crimes are
effective in gathering information and in solving some types of crimes
i. Their effect on the overall crime rate is not known, but it is likely
negligible
g. Costs include:
129
i. increased depersonalization of the criminal justice system
ii. isolation of the police form the policed
iii. increased citizen suspicion of surveillance
iv. polarization of society due to the creation of affluent, technologically
secured garrison communities
v. possible decreased citizen support and legitimization of the criminal
justice system
vi. when news media convey the message that these efforts are the answer for
reducing crime rates and when this is coupled with the entertainment
message of crime being generated through individually based causes, the
social construction of crime as a technological rather than a social problem
becomes the logical result
1. The belief that we can engineer our way out of the crime problem
through more equipment and manpower is bolstered
h. The collective lesson is that media-based programs are panaceas for the general
crime problem
i. To the extent that the public believes this and policy makers act on it,
resources for other approaches will be drained
i. To solve crimes and deter criminals, governments must intervene in citizens’ lives
i. The media and media technology provide a means to do so in new ways
that are felt to be:
1. more efficient
2. less obviously intrusive
ii. In practice such applications cannot avoid opening up for view new areas
of:
1. public life
2. the criminal justice system
3. police– citizen interactions.
a. In certain instances, such as in the use of patrol car
cameras, this is seen as a positive course
b. In other instances, such as in the use of hidden police
surveillance systems, the desirability of widely doing so is
not so clear
c. With proper oversight the use of media and media
technology in the criminal justice system can have both due
process and crime control benefits
j. The media are a potentially positive but, it must be remembered, ultimately
limited resource for criminal justice
i. The media should be an element of the total criminal justice policy
picture, but media cannot be the mainstay of crime and justice policies
k. Ultimately, the media affects social attitudes and perceptions more than social
behaviors so they are restrained to influencing policy support and public beliefs
more than criminal acts
i. Connected to the question of how much of our criminal justice policy
should be media based is the question of how many criminal justice
policies are media generated
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Chapter Key Terms
prosocial television [178] media mug book [189]
public service announcements (PSAs) [178] surveillance effect [189]
announcement effect [181] closed circuit television (CCTV) [192]
videotaped interrogations [188] diffusion of benefits [195]
media lineup [189] displacement of crime [195]
Helpful and Interesting Internet Sites
The following sites are interesting sources for this chapter. Please review them before
recommending them to your students.
Anticrime Campaigns
http://www.mcgruff.org/
http://www.wetip.com/
Reefer Madness (1930)
http://www.google.com/search?q=reefer+madness&tbo=p&tbs=vid%3A1&source=vgc&
aq=0&oq=reefer+
Surveillance
https://ssd.eff.org//
