And I’d like to end on an anecdote. When I was working in a shop at Southend (In England) a robber attempted to swipe some computer games from behind the counter. Myself and a fellow worker both attempted to restrain him, but failed, ending up with only his jacket and a shoe. I also had a good enough look at him for the police to check local CCTV for him. He was caught and imprisoned, thanks to CCTV.
I know there’s nothing to back that up because it’s anecdotal, but that’s just an example of a guy who’ll be thinking twice before committing a crime in a high-CCTV area.

http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd%5B347%5D=x-347-61925#3

> “In a report to the Scottish Office on the impact of CCTV, Jason Ditton, Director of the Scottish Centre for Criminology, argued that many claims of crime reduction are little more than fantasy. “All (evaluations and statistics) we have seen so far are wholly unreliable”, The British Journal of Criminology went further by describing the statistics as “….post hoc shoestring efforts by the untrained and self interested practitioner ”

> “Three recent criminological reports (Home Office, Scottish Office and Southbank University) have discredited the conventional wisdom about the cameras effectiveness. In a report to the Scottish Office on the impact of CCTV, Jason Ditton, Director of the Scottish Centre for Criminology, argued that the claims of crime reduction are little more than fantasy. “All (evaluations and statistics) we have seen so far are wholly unreliable”, The British Journal of Criminology described the statistics as “….post hoc shoestring efforts by the untrained and self interested practitioner.” In short, the crime statistics are without credibility.”

Note that it’s not just Privacy International (who obviously have an agenda on this matter) saying this; they’re reporting the claims of independent and unbiased auditors and professionals in the field.

So, just because some copper or CCTV salesman makes a claim in a press release, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s actually true, and just because some shoddy journalist takes it at face value and writes it up as a story without checking the facts doesn’t make it any truer, and any time anyone’s actually looked into it in detail, with real statistics and maths and everything, it has turned out not to be.

“CCTV makes you safer” is like every other urban legend: persistent, plausible, often repeated by those who seemingly ought to know – but it’s not actually true.