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Police Cameras More Effective When Clustered
By tigger.uic.edu - UIC News Release
Published: 05/21/2012

Chicago Police Cameras More Effective When Clustered, Study Says

Chicago's network of police cameras is more effective at reducing crime in high-crime areas than in low-crime areas, according to a new study.

The report, co-authored by Rajiv Shah, University of Illinois at Chicago adjunct assistant professor of communication, suggests that blue-light cameras should be concentrated in high-crime areas rather than spread throughout a city.

This "hotspot" approach differs from the way cameras are used in many cities, says Shah, who studies legal and policy implications of communication technologies.

"The idea championed by former mayor Richard Daley of placing a camera on every corner results in the vast majority of those cameras having little or no impact on reducing crime," he said.

Shah and co-author Jeremy Braithwaite, a doctoral student at the University of California-Irvine, analyzed two previous studies -- one by students at Northwestern University and the other by the Chicago Police Department -- that investigated the effectiveness of Chicago's surveillance network.

Their analysis indicates that the initial crime level of an area where a camera was placed had a significant effect on the camera's overall impact. Cameras in high-crime areas were associated with large reductions in crimes, while medium- to low-crime areas experienced minimal change.

"Diffusing a large number of cameras throughout a city does not appear to be effective in reducing crime," Shah said. "Instead, the targeted use of a smaller number of cameras

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