(Editor's Note: We've just returned from over two weeks of a 1400 mile trip in the English countryside. Our built-in GPS sounded the number of cameras that recorded us each time we passed one of their CCTV cameras on both major highways and secondary roads. There was something reassuring about those sounds but others would saycategorize the system as an intrusive and a Big Brotherish exercise.)

With state and municipal budgets shrinking and public safety resources diminishing, public surveillance camera systems offer local law enforcement agencies a cost-effective way to deter, document, and reduce crime, a new Urban Institute study finds.

Between 2007 and 2010, researchers from the Urban Institute’s Justice Policy Center studied public surveillance systems in Baltimore, Chicago, and Washington, DC, to measure the extent of their use, their effects on crime, their other benefits, and their costs.

While results varied by area, surveillance systems in Baltimore and Chicago produced more than enough benefits to justify their costs. No cost-benefit analysis was conducted in Washington, DC, because the cameras didn’t show a statistically significant impact on crime there.

Much of the cameras’ success or failure depended on how they were set up and monitored, and how each city balanced privacy with security, said Nancy La Vigne, the study’s lead researcher and the director of the Institute’s Justice Policy Center.

“Overall, the most effective surveillance systems are those that are monitored by trained staff and have enough cameras to detect crimes in progress and investigate them after the fact,” La Vigne observed.

In Baltimore

• The bulk of Baltimore’s 500-plus camera system was implemented downtown in 2005, with the remaining cameras placed in high-crime neighborhoods.
• Roughly four months after cameras were installed downtown, total crime dropped on average by more than 30 incidents a month — a 25 percent decline.
• Violent crime downtown fell by 22 percent and larceny fell by 30 percent. No evidence suggests that downtown crime simply moved to nearby areas.
• Findings indicate that the crime-prevention benefits of surveillance cameras may have extended beyond the downtown cameras’ viewing areas.
• Cameras in the Greenmount neighborhood led to nearly a 10 percent decline in crime.
• In the Tri-District area, crime fell by nearly 35 percent as a result of cameras after controlling for crime reductions in a matched comparison area.
• The North Avenue area, however, saw no crime reduction after cameras were installed.
• Overall, Baltimore’s surveillance cameras yielded $1.50 in benefits for every $1.00 spent on the system.

In Chicago

• Chicago’s extensive wireless surveillance network includes approximately 2,000 highly visible cameras operated by the Chicago Police Department and allows officers to watch real-time feeds from their computers.
• In August 2003, when cameras were initially installed in Humboldt Park — one of two areas studied — crime spiked briefly but then dropped 20 percent the next month and remained low on average for years.

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