CCTV is a waste of time

In my fisking of our Dear Leader yesterday, I questioned the evidence about the effectiveness of CCTV, which our Dear Leader says the public support.

Thanks to Not Sassure, I've come across a report by the Information Commissioner which says:

During the 1990s the Home Office spent 78% of it crime prevention budget on installing CCTV46 and an estimated £500M of public money has been invested in the CCTV infrastructure over the last decade. However a Home Office study concluded that ‘the CCTV schemes that have been assessed had little overall effect on crime levels’.

The Home Office study itself also has the following (on p. vi)

Out of the 13 systems evaluated six showed a relatively substantial reduction in crime in the target area compared with the control area, but only two showed a statistically significant reduction relative to the control, and in one of these cases the change could be explained by the presence of confounding variables. Crime increased in seven areas but this could not be attributed to CCTV. The findings in these seven areas were inconclusive as a range of variables could account for the changes in crime levels, including fluctuations in crime rates caused by seasonal, divisional and national trends and additional initiatives.

and this (p. 48):

[T]he presence of CCTV in an area actually increases worry about crime, possibly because the assumed need for CCTV to be installed makes the area seem more problematic than the respondents had previously thought.

A government report contradicts Blair's own arguments... any other reasons you wanna try, Tone?