1. Crime-fighting technology is getting more sophisticated and rightly so. The police need to be equipped for the 21st century. In Britain we’ve already got the world’s biggest DNA database. By next year, the state will have access to the genetic data of 4.25m people: one British-based person in 14. Hundreds of thousands of those on the database will never have been charged with a crime.
2. Professor Mike Press, who has spent the past decade studying how design can contribute to crime reduction, said that, in order for CCTV to have any effect, it must be used in a targeted way. For example, a scheme in Manchester records every licence plate at the entrance of a shopping complex and alerts police when one is found to belong to an untaxed or stolen car. This is an effective example of monitoring, he said. CCTV can also have the opposite effect of that intended, by giving citizens a false sense of security and encouraging them to be careless with property and personal safety. Professor Press believes that much of the increase is driven by the marketing efforts of security companies who promote the crime-reducing benefits of their products. He described it as a ‘lazy approach to crime prevention’ and said that authorities should instead be focusing on how to alter the environment to reduce crime.
3. But in reality, this is not what is happening. Instead, police are considering using more technology. Police forces have recently begun experimenting with cameras in their helmets. The footage will be stored on police computers, along with the footage from thousands of CCTV cameras and millions of pictures from number plate recognition cameras used increasingly to check up on motorists.
4. And now another type of technology is being introduced. It’s called the Microdrone and it’s a toy-sized remote-control craft that hovers above streets or crowds to film what’s going on beneath. The Microdrone has already been used to monitor rock festivals, but its supplier has also been in discussions to supply it to the Metropolitan Police, and Soca, the Serious Organised Crime Agency. The drones are small enough to be unnoticed by people on the ground when they are flying at 350 ft. They contain high-resolution video surveillance equipment and an infrared night vision capability, so even in darkness they give their operators a bird’s-eye view of locations while remaining virtually undetectable.