Re:The answer is... (Score 1)

if we didn't have the IRA, we wouldn't have hundreds of cameras in London or other major cities. If Michel Ryan didn't go on a gun touting rampage through a little village, Hungerford wouldn't have had CCTV installed. As a direct result as time has passed I feel CCTV has reduced crime or at least reduced it because the evidence from CCTV has helped catch the right people and put them away. Without CCTV we could be hunting for not 1 or 2 jack the ripper like people, but hundreds because as time has gone on, we (our lives) have become more complicated and we are less willing to tell the authority's about things we believe maybe going on about other people so kiddie fiddlers and rapists would be more common. I work on both sides of the lens and feel I have nothing to hide and feel safer with a camera operator just checking me out if I'm walking through a lonely street at 2 in the morning. I feel reassured that I know there is less crime than there could be partly because of CCTV, I just wish the government would make changes to the punishment rules like making life mean life and not parole after a few years, it's bad enough prison is a home from home and I really see it as a holiday camp with added security, not the dirty hovel it should be.