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Abstract : This paper focuses on American crime issues and tries to bring some effective and useful ideas to the prevention of crime in China. Surveillance equipment, which is able to help police to prevent crime in a effective way, however, also brings some privacy problem to the society. Based on the study of United States crime rate and related research, this paper claims that surveillance equipment is important and necessary for the prevention of crime, especially the street crime.
Keywords : Surveillance equipment, privacy, crime rate, street robbery
1. Introduction:
With the development of science and economy, new technology becomes more and more popular. Such as security camera and public surveillance equipment, all these facilities make a enormous improvement on the prevention of crime nowadays. However, it creates some privacy problems to some extent. Some citizens feel uncomfortable to be watched in public all the time; citizens should own the right to keep their privacy from surveillance even in public.
2. Situation in United States:
As we know, the typical crime which usually occurs in public is robbery. Data from the American police department indicates that nearly 408,217 robberies occurred nationwide in 2009 (FBI.gov), which means there will be around one thousand citizens robbed every single day in the United States. It is not hard to see that people there are living under enormous threats from crimes everyday, even it is a most advantage and powerful country. The worse is that robbery, which is defined as "the taking or attempting to take anything of value from the care, custody, or control of persons by force or threat of force or violence and by putting the victim in fear" (FBI.gov), not only takes people's money, but also threatens people's health or even life. That means robbery occurred in public will be more dangerous and harmful to citizens' daily lives. It is not a big deal if a crime only takes a little property, but the situation will be more serious if the criminal threatens the victims' health or even life by force and violence. All these informations and data indicate how serious and dangerous the crime situation is in the modern society. Compared with the importance of people's privacy, the prevention of crime seems to be more necessary.
3. Use of surveillance equipment:
Public Closed Circuit Television, which is called CCTV, has been utilized in the public for over twenty years in United States. It is a system of public surveillance. The article written by Ratcliffe and his partners indicates that public closed circuit televisions exert significant effects on the crime reduction (Ratcliffe, Taniguchi, and Taylor). The study in this article was based on an analysis that incorporates controls for long-term trends and seasonality, and the amount of CCTV and crime rates in different areas were compared and analysed in this study 4. Theory Basis
However, people would want to know why and how the surveillance could influence the crime rate. Routine Activities Theory argues that "structural changes in routine activity patterns can influence crime rates by affecting the convergence in space and time of the three minimal elements of direct-contact predatory violations: (1) motivated offenders, (2) suitable targets, and (3) the absence of capable guardians against a violation" (Felson and Cohen 589). So it is not hard to find that, to prevent the crime, the governments and police department should control these three factors. Surveillance equipment, as security camera, could reduce the crime rate significantly by influencing the three factors, which means surveillance equipment could influence, or rather destroy, the criminals' motivation, make the victims more difficult to be attacked, and ensure the safety level in public.
As all we know, it is a tough mission to collect an effective feedback as an direct evidence if the crime occurred without any surveillance. However, if there are effective security measures,as camera, setting in the public, criminals will no longer think that they are difficult to arrest and be punished. The detailed process of a robbery could be recorded clearly by the cameras set on street, and it will be easy to achieve an identification of the criminal. As a result, most of the robbers, who have the goal of little property, would lose the motivation to commit a crime under the risk of arrest. Also, security surveillance equipment could help the police .the victims could obtain the medical aid immediately, which means surveillance equipment could make the victims difficult to be attacked and ensure the safety level in public.
Conclusion:
Privacy means the quality or state of being hidden from, or undisturbed by, the observation or activities of other people. There should be some people who will concern their privacy under the surveillance in the public. However, people should know that the unique purpose of the security surveillance is only to monitor the situation of public, which means it will not hurt anybody or make any property loss. Considering that the benefit of using the surveillance equipment in the public is much larger than the negative effects to privacy, it is necessary to take full advantage of the security surveillance equipment to keep our lives in a peace world. Also, police department of China should bring these ideas into the prevention of crime, it will definitely make some effective positive outcome, and make citizens' life better.
References
[1] Jerry H. Ratcliffe, Travis Taniguchi, and Ralph B. Taylor. "The crime reduction effects of public CCTV cameras: a multi-method spatial approach." Justice Quarterly 26:4 (2009): 746-770. Print.
[2] Lawrence E. Cohen, and Marcus Felson.
"Social Change and Crime Rate Trends: A Routine Activity Approach." American Sociological Revi-
ew 44 (1979): 588-608. Print.
[3] U.S. Department of Justice. Washington, D.C.: Federal Bureau of Investigation, n.d. Web. 4 February 2011.
作者簡介：王扬，青岛大学法学院 诉讼法学 研究方向：刑事诉讼法。
（作者单位：青岛大学法学院）
Keywords : Surveillance equipment, privacy, crime rate, street robbery
1. Introduction:
With the development of science and economy, new technology becomes more and more popular. Such as security camera and public surveillance equipment, all these facilities make a enormous improvement on the prevention of crime nowadays. However, it creates some privacy problems to some extent. Some citizens feel uncomfortable to be watched in public all the time; citizens should own the right to keep their privacy from surveillance even in public.
2. Situation in United States:
As we know, the typical crime which usually occurs in public is robbery. Data from the American police department indicates that nearly 408,217 robberies occurred nationwide in 2009 (FBI.gov), which means there will be around one thousand citizens robbed every single day in the United States. It is not hard to see that people there are living under enormous threats from crimes everyday, even it is a most advantage and powerful country. The worse is that robbery, which is defined as "the taking or attempting to take anything of value from the care, custody, or control of persons by force or threat of force or violence and by putting the victim in fear" (FBI.gov), not only takes people's money, but also threatens people's health or even life. That means robbery occurred in public will be more dangerous and harmful to citizens' daily lives. It is not a big deal if a crime only takes a little property, but the situation will be more serious if the criminal threatens the victims' health or even life by force and violence. All these informations and data indicate how serious and dangerous the crime situation is in the modern society. Compared with the importance of people's privacy, the prevention of crime seems to be more necessary.
3. Use of surveillance equipment:
Public Closed Circuit Television, which is called CCTV, has been utilized in the public for over twenty years in United States. It is a system of public surveillance. The article written by Ratcliffe and his partners indicates that public closed circuit televisions exert significant effects on the crime reduction (Ratcliffe, Taniguchi, and Taylor). The study in this article was based on an analysis that incorporates controls for long-term trends and seasonality, and the amount of CCTV and crime rates in different areas were compared and analysed in this study 4. Theory Basis
However, people would want to know why and how the surveillance could influence the crime rate. Routine Activities Theory argues that "structural changes in routine activity patterns can influence crime rates by affecting the convergence in space and time of the three minimal elements of direct-contact predatory violations: (1) motivated offenders, (2) suitable targets, and (3) the absence of capable guardians against a violation" (Felson and Cohen 589). So it is not hard to find that, to prevent the crime, the governments and police department should control these three factors. Surveillance equipment, as security camera, could reduce the crime rate significantly by influencing the three factors, which means surveillance equipment could influence, or rather destroy, the criminals' motivation, make the victims more difficult to be attacked, and ensure the safety level in public.
As all we know, it is a tough mission to collect an effective feedback as an direct evidence if the crime occurred without any surveillance. However, if there are effective security measures,as camera, setting in the public, criminals will no longer think that they are difficult to arrest and be punished. The detailed process of a robbery could be recorded clearly by the cameras set on street, and it will be easy to achieve an identification of the criminal. As a result, most of the robbers, who have the goal of little property, would lose the motivation to commit a crime under the risk of arrest. Also, security surveillance equipment could help the police .the victims could obtain the medical aid immediately, which means surveillance equipment could make the victims difficult to be attacked and ensure the safety level in public.
Conclusion:
Privacy means the quality or state of being hidden from, or undisturbed by, the observation or activities of other people. There should be some people who will concern their privacy under the surveillance in the public. However, people should know that the unique purpose of the security surveillance is only to monitor the situation of public, which means it will not hurt anybody or make any property loss. Considering that the benefit of using the surveillance equipment in the public is much larger than the negative effects to privacy, it is necessary to take full advantage of the security surveillance equipment to keep our lives in a peace world. Also, police department of China should bring these ideas into the prevention of crime, it will definitely make some effective positive outcome, and make citizens' life better.
References
[1] Jerry H. Ratcliffe, Travis Taniguchi, and Ralph B. Taylor. "The crime reduction effects of public CCTV cameras: a multi-method spatial approach." Justice Quarterly 26:4 (2009): 746-770. Print.
[2] Lawrence E. Cohen, and Marcus Felson.
"Social Change and Crime Rate Trends: A Routine Activity Approach." American Sociological Revi-
ew 44 (1979): 588-608. Print.
[3] U.S. Department of Justice. Washington, D.C.: Federal Bureau of Investigation, n.d. Web. 4 February 2011.
作者簡介：王扬，青岛大学法学院 诉讼法学 研究方向：刑事诉讼法。
（作者单位：青岛大学法学院）