Targeting the unwanted: Video surveillance and categorical exclusion in Oslo, Norway

Abstract

The rise of video surveillance in the United Kingdom, in the form of the public installation of closed circuit television (CCTV), has been seen by several scholars as a contributing factor to the increasing exclusion of unwanted categories of people from city centers, a develo pment often referred to as the ‘commercialization’ or ‘purification’ of the city. Drawing from field observations over three years in control rooms in Oslo, Norway, this article discusses whether CCTV systems in Oslo contribute to a similar process of exclusion. To do so, I compare the open street video surveillance system with two other CCTV systems - a shopping mall and a major transport center. The introduction of open street CCTV in Oslo in 1999 did not create social exclusion, but recent developments show the possibility remains. Although drug addicts and young people were the primary targets of surveillance in all three sites studied, ejections varied considerably from site to site. The shopping mall system had a higher ejection rate than the open street system, and was therefore the system with the clearest exclusionary effects. Reasons for the different ejection rates are discussed, in particular the social structure of the site under surveillance and the organizational relationships of CCTV operators to the policing agents connected to the surveillance system.