Closed circuit television, better referred to as CCTV, is technology designed for visual surveillance. Its purpose is to monitor activities. It works by way of a dedicated communication link between a recording system and cameras (also referred to as a fixed link.)
Up until a decade ago CCTV didn’t get much notice and was not that popular or widely used. ButNBut it’s use has grown exponentially. Where the monitoring system is useful for public facilities, residential subdivisions, parking lots and in many more sectors.
CCTV cameras help reduce questions of safety in areas like buses and terminals, taxis stands, trains and train stations, phone booths, vending machines and ATM locations. The cities and towns themselves are protecting their major thoroughfares and business districts with CCTV equipment that has camera capacity for zooming, full tilting, panning and even infrared for night viewing. Hospitals are beginning to use loop television products to keep an eye fixed on the interactions between hospitalized children and visiting parents or relations they suspect of molesting or otherwise abusing them.
While the technology was first seen in Britain as a deterrent and watchdog for major crime prevention, its use has increasingly come into play to catch in the act of, or deter from the act, of considerably lesser crimes. which can or might not be seen as a good thing.
Some public safety authorities claim reduction of violent and other crimes as high as 75 percent, stating CCTV as the reason behind this. Others dispute the statistics, stating that the results are flawed because of inept reporting and interpretation. One conjecture is that, because CCTV is far more prevalent in more affluent areas, criminals have merely moved down the road to those lower income areas whose residents and administrators cannot afford the costly CCTV system.
One results of CCTV’s capturing crimes in action is that a preponderance of alleged perpetrators, faced with the knowledge that their criminal actions are captured on TV.