Complete and Utter Zebu

Andy Rennison, the Forensic Science Regulator, is to be given the job of overseeing Britain’s CCTV network and implementing a national CCTV strategy. About bloody time, though why we are spied on by so many of the hideous things when the Home Office’s own studies say they are virtually useless for cutting any crime other than in car parks is a mystery.

Britain, we are frequently told, is the most surveilled nation in the world and we have no reason to doubt it. However, virtually every news report or article about CCTV quotes the figure of 4.2 million CCTV cameras, one for every 12 Britons. It’s a frightening statistic. It is also Complete and Utter Zebu. You want to know the truth? Nobody has the slightest bloody idea how many of the ruddy things there are. The government doesn’t even count its own cameras, let alone anybody else’s.

For starters, the magical figure of 4.2 million dates from as long ago as 2002. You will find it hard to credit how the figure was calculated. A pair of academics, Michael McCahill and Clive Norris, did a survey of Putney High Street, where they found 49% of businesses had CCTV while, around the corner in Upper Richmond Road, they found 34% used it. Rather different results. What they did then was bizarre in the extreme. They simply split the difference. With no evidence that Putney would be typical of the country as a whole, they made the assumption that, across the entire country, 41.5% of businesses would have CCTV cameras. This, they calculated, meant 4,285,000 CCTV cameras in total in Britain. It’s about as scientific as guessing the weight of a cake at a village fete yet that is the figure that has been quoted authoritatively every since even though, since 2002, the things have been breeding like randy rabbits who’ve been buying Viagra on the web.

No wonder none of us believe any official statistics.