Supporting Documents

The report to the Council's Transportation Committee on March 9, 1999, included the long-awaited "Comprehensive Review of CCTV" which they had promised over a year earlier. This Review was a disappointment, containing nothing more than a rehash of opinion in favour of CCTV - submissions by opponents were absent.

However, the report included a "Review of Effectiveness of CCTV schemes in Bingley & Keighley", undertaken by "a third year student at Leeds Metropolitan University" which was part of his dissertation. The unnamed student had been recruited in October 1998. Such a review had been proposed by the 1 in 12 Club in its submission in March 1998.

The "Review" report claims that crime statistics from Bingley and Keighley "show evidence to suggest that CCTV has been an effective means of crime reduction. It can be surmised that at least some of this crime reduction can be attributed to crime prevention directly resulting from the use of CCTV. The incidences of burglary, ...and car crime in particular dropped markedly over the period reviewed".

This is based on comparisons of crime figures in Bingley and Keighley in 1995 - before CCTV was introduced, and 1997 - afterwards. (see below).

Unfortunately the young student engaged to produce this report seems to have overlooked the basic requirement of using a "control" in this kind of study. The obvious control here would be Shipley centre, which didn't have cameras in either 1995 or 1997.

When the figures for Shipley centre are included, it is immediately apparent that Shipley shows exactly the same trend as both Bingley and Keighley, so clearly this has nothing to do with CCTV. In fact, all this shows is the national trend over this period, which was a steady reduction in recorded crime.

Falling levels of recorded crime: Bingley & Keighley - before & after CCTV; Shipley without CCTV throughout.

It is clear that the conclusion (ii) in the council report "Based on evidence in Keighley and Bingley where there is direct comparison of crime statistics available there is strong evidence to show that CCTV is effective in reducing crime and assists in apprehension of criminals" is entirely bogus.

Even the Councils own statisticians were dismayed at such a basic error. In an attempt to justify this, the council produced the following:

"Whilst recognising that crime statistics in Shipley showed a comparable drop over the same period the difficulty of introducing a comparable control is illustrated by the following:

(i) Between 1995 and 1997 Bradford Council introduced improvements in the area covered by CCTV effectively reducing traffic levels and changing pedestrian desire lines.

(ii) The CCTV coverage in Keighley is more extensive than that in Shipley which concentrates solely on the Market Square and Fox's Corner.

(iii) CCTV coverage in Bingley and Keighley include a mixture of car parks and public spaces, whereas Shipley essentially covers public spaces.

To use Shipley as a Control as suggested here is not considered appropriate, particularly over the period required."

Councils "Evaluation of Effectiveness of CCTV "

1 in 12 Evaluation Submission, May 1998

"Sham Review"

CCTV Main Feature

KDIS Online

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