Why is CCTV not mentioned in our Home Security Survey application?

For those of you who promote our Home Security Survey I want to clear something up, which is why there is no mention of CCTV within the survey questions. I might add that I’ve had three emails about this in as many months.

Domestic closed circuit television, especially those IP systems that you can monitor remotely on your phones, tablets and laptops are undoubtedly useful for home security and I say as much in my CCTV advice section on this website. However, when I put the survey together I was careful only to reference generic crime prevention products, such as alarms, lights, safes etc, and crime prevention techniques, for which there was evidence that proved their value.

At the time of writing the survey there was no independent evidence available to me that proved domestically installed CCTV worked to prevent crime. In fact, the only evidence I had to hand were evaluations of what I term ‘public CCTV systems’ of the type you’ll find installed in town centres and car parks and those evaluations were not particularly promising.

So, I decided not to include CCTV in the survey, because I was not convinced of its value to prevent crime from happening and I did not want to divert my readers’ attention away from products and techniques that I knew would work. I was also mindful of the length of the survey, which already asks up to 75 questions for some dwelling types.

Please don’t think that I have a downer on domestic CCTV!  I do think it has value, but I need to be sure that people’s expectations about it are realistic. 

In my section on CCTV I list no fewer than ten uses for a system, six of which have nothing to do with crime. Here’s the list:

• Deterring people from committing offences both inside and outside the home
• Gathering evidence of criminal activity, should crime occur
• Providing an image of a caller at the door before it is answered
• Watching over vehicles parked to the front or side of the home
• Enabling remote observation of the family home (inside and out) when the occupants are at work or away on holiday
• Checking to see if deliveries were made
• Remotely checking to see if employed persons, such as cleaners and builders turned up for work and left at the appropriate times
• Remotely checking on children or other family members when the householder is out for the evening
• Checking the grounds of the home from the comfort of the armchair
• Checking on children’s bedrooms after bedtime

My website’s objective is to encourage people to prevent crime and for CCTV to do that the cameras have to be visible to the thief. If they are visible then what are the likely outcomes?

• The burglar sees the CCTV cameras, is deterred and moves on to the next target
• The burglar sees the CCTV cameras and takes some action to ensure that the captured images cannot identify him/her
• The burglar sees the CCTV cameras and does not care that he/she might be identified later (Some burglars, especially those with addictions, take more risks)
• The burglar does not see the CCTV cameras and commits the crime, which means that the cameras have not been a deterrent

If the cameras are not visible then they will not act as a deterrent, but whether they are visible or not the next thing that has to be certain is the capture of evidential quality images and only two years ago the Association of Chief Police Officers stated that 80% of CCTV images received from the public were ‘not fit for purpose’; neither useful for identifying a suspect or being of use in a prosecution. 

So, I hope you can see why I have been reticent to recommend CCTV as a means to prevent crime and why I left it out of the Home Security Survey.

So, what is my position today, now that around 5% of households have a CCTV system installed?

Although I am still waiting for the evidence to prove it I do recognise that a domestic CCTV system can deter some crime.  I consider it to be something akin to ‘the icing on the cake’ and I would urge anybody who is considering an installation to first ensure that they are doing everything their insurers have asked them to do. Insurers rarely require CCTV for domestic premises and don’t give discounts for it, which they often do for alarms.

Next year I will be tweaking my Home Security Survey application and amongst other changes I will be adding a new question about CCTV. Before that I have to consider what weighting I should give it, because this will affect the respondent’s risk assessment score. At the moment I am minded to give ‘alarmed’ systems a higher weighting than more basic systems and if it’s covert (essentially to gather evidence) then its presence won’t affect the score at all.

See the pains I have to go through?

In the meantime the absence of reference to CCTV in our Home Security Survey makes no difference to its usefulness and so I would urge you and your friends and family to take the plunge and complete the survey before Xmas. If you do it before Xmas holidays then my recommendations will give you something to do to work off the mince pies and turkey!

Home Security Survey: http://thecrimepreventionwebsite.com/home-security-assessment/468/home-security-survey--diy/