CCTV identity management and implications for criminal justice: Some considerations

Abstract

The UK Presidency of the European Union called for an expansive, mandatory policy of surveillance technologies aimed at the reduction of crime and the protection of citizens. Research indicates that the efficacy for this task of the technology, epitomised by CCTV, cannot be taken for granted. This paper asks whether the effects of the technological surveillance environment may be more problematic than currently posited in the literature to the extent that they render more vulnerable and undermine the identities of those they are pledged to safeguard. Much of the literature in surveillance studies debates whether surveillance technology, particularly CCTV, has the effects of crime reduction and prevention attributed to it by proponents. This paper goes one step further and through a process of critical analysis explores the import for individuals subjected to the process of surveillance technologies epitomized by CCTV. In particular the paper addresses the question as it is perceived through the postmodernist agenda. Accordingly in the process of critical analysis the paper considers the effects of transcarceration, the phenetic fix and the technological imperative.