A. Imagine that you are moving away from home for the first time to attend a college in a new city or town. Your parents are helping you find an accommodation. You find an accommodation that has a CCTV camera installed at the entrance to assure the parents and students of the safety measures they adopt for the tenants. How would the presence of a CCTV camera influence your decision? How are your parents likely to respond? Do you think your thoughts on the CCTV camera, and its purpose and symbolism, would change over time?
B. What is your response to the presence of CCTV cameras in an isolated and poorly lit area just outside your campus?
C. How would you feel if CCTV cameras were installed outside the toilet facilities, in the common room and other areas within the campus?
D. Would you feel empowered to ask to be granted access to the footage recorded by a CCTV camera, should the need arise? What challenges do you foresee?
A.Presence of CCTV camera will influence my decision positively because i will feel more safe and secure as far as entry of anyone is concerned.Hopefully my parents will respond positively. Yes my thoughts on CCTV camera, and it’s purpose and symbolism may change depends on situation and it’s function.
B.I will strongly agree and will gve a positive nod as far as presence of CCTV cameras in an isolated and poorly lit area are concerned that too just outside my campus.
C.I will feel uncomfortable because i can’t trust much on technological gadgets .
D.Yes ,I will feel empowered to ask to grant access to the footage recorded by CCTV camera if need arises….but i know practicaly i will face lot of challenges which will obviously start from my ist school that is from my family.
Thankyou.
CCTV cameras in schools haven’t necessarily ensured that students don’t get sexually abused. That said, CCTV cameras might serve as deterrence because visual footage could be used to implicate an offender. The downside of CCTV cameras is surveillance over student activism, and moral policing that could be used to target inter-caste and queer relationships.
I agree, at my last school, we would adopt a punitive approach to determine consequences for students who had taken items deliberately and/or sometimes out of habit. Sometimes a few students would take laptops and hide them in places. The CCTV footage helped us find their whereabouts and hold offenders responsible. Since this was an elite school in India where students wore expensive jewellery, carried iPhones, and MacBooks, CCTVs were installed for their protection. The children of highly influential parents’ had received kidnapping threats and there was a time where bodyguards would follow these students around everywhere. Eventually, with more CCTV cameras, these guards were allowed to camp out rather than shadow students to all their classes. However, my current school adopts a restorative approach to justice. I think the idea of solutionism is harmful and does not allow us to address the problem at its root. We have allowed students to lock their lockers if they wish to but otherwise, lockers generally remain unlocked. Some of my older students who are a part of the Nagoya Action Heroes club led a series of workshop on consent on topics such as locker etiquettes, taking things without people’s permission, etc with grade 6 to address the problem at its root. While some parents and teachers suggested that we install CCTV cameras to respond to a growing number of cases of theft at school, the administration, and some of us teachers don’t think it is helpful in the long run. As Chintan said, it places queer students, and in our case, it can become a stick to beat marginalised students with.
A. I believe that CCTV cameras would make my parents feel safer about the accommodation. But I am not certain about the extent to which I will be comfortable with the same. While it is intended to ensure safety of the tenants, I am sceptical about who will monitor these cameras and what they can do with the footage. I am sure my thoughts on CCTV will evolve over time, depending upon what I experience in life.
B. I do think it is necessary to monitor these areas. Several girls from my college have been stalked and harassed in such locations but arresting those culprits was difficult because there was no way of confirming their identity. Good quality CCTV cameras should go a long way in checking this problem.
C. I would feel deeply uncomfortable with CCTV cameras being placed in these areas. I can see such monitoring having a detrimental impact on the privacy of students and their freedom of speech.
D. I do feel empowered to ask for footage of these cameras. However, I can foresee the administration being reluctant to hand them over. People may question my authority, either as a student or as a woman or as both, to demand these tapes.
CCTV cameras are definitely great for surveillance & deterring miscreants but let’s also discuss the challenges/opportunities:
Apart from the fact that some may see them as restricting, installation of CCTV cams needs to be accompanied with (please refer to Pradyuman Thakur /Ryan International Murder case where CCTV cameras were very much installed but most of them found to be dysfunctional during police investigation) :
A) Constant monitoring: In absence of constant feed monitoring, CCTV cameras become just a symbolic gesture. Due to heavy volume of files, lot of organizations don’t even keep files long enough. If it is an insider job, as is in many cases, the miscreants get to know of this security lapse and make the most of it.
B) Crisis response mechanism: In large campuses especially, unless there is an instant intervention mechanism, CCTV cameras are at best, post-crime evidence. Unless an organization has been able to prevent an incident, what are the chances of them giving us CCTV footage is anybody’s guess.
To some extent, presence of CCTV cameras ensure security because there’s always a fear of getting caught. But there have been instances that these are damaged before miscreants act.
To me it doesn’t ensure complete protection. It just records what has happened – it cannot prevent any mishap.
Yes, CCTV indeed provides a psychological support in ensuring a sense of security. But merely a CCTV should not be seen as an end measure but a facilitator to ensure a secure environment. The authorities incharge should be active, supportive and cooperative in coordinating with the victim and the respective authorities in the unfortunate case of a mishap and encourage people to actively report incidents to take suitable measures to address the issues faced by people on a regular basis.
I have a question to ask –
“To transform society, we need to transform the deluded impulses within human hearts.” says Dr Daisaku Ikeda – Buddhist philosopher, peace builder and author.
It is true that no amount of changes in infrastructure of an environment can ensure complete safety for anyone, unless the people living there are transformed from within. How to educate our students towards this end – expand a network of people committed towards a cause of greater good and foster youth leaders of a new age”
Installation of CCTV cameras in no way guarantee safety. Most institutions have poor record maintenance and sometimes purely no back tracking of data. There have been instances of theft and abuse in places which possessed such cameras even with recording facilities for that matter, but the accused have been free to walk on his/her own legs. Until individuals do not develop a level of accountability and strong content to ethics, no place can be reported safe even with the most latest of technologies.
A. CCTV cameras would be one among many factors for choosing accommodation. CCTV cameras are useful only after an (unfortunate) event has taken place. Thus the importance attached to CCTV cameras by my 0arents and myself would depend on how a CCTV camera became useful after an unwanted incident in recovering losses and identifying perpetrators.
B. Since CCTV cameras can be effective only when they are complemented by an efficient (human) security setup, the existence of a CCTV camera in an isolated and poorly lit area would have little effect on me.
C. To my mind there should not be a problem in installing CCTV cameras in campuses (including outside toilets).
D. Yes, access to CCTV footage empowers. Just as one would expect from others, requesting for footage and the use thereof should take place in a context of matters of security alone.
B.I do agree that presence of CCTV cameras in a completely dark or unlit street can be helpful in making someone feel safer to a certain extent. However, I also believe that its not a complete solution. Cities are dynamic spaces which are changing constantly . I feel creating “eyes on streets” is a more realistic solution for enhancing one’s safety perception especially women. I am pretty sure many more people would be willing to walk outside the college campus if there are more people or activities like (hawkers and vendors selling street food, shopping goods, etc) happening around.
A. Having experienced this situation for real, I can safely say that my mother was relieved when she saw the presence of a CCTV camera. I was personally unaffected by this at the beginning, but more recently I have begun to appreciate their presence more, especially in metro stations. I know that my parents are very cautious about my security, and so do their best to keep all these things in mind, but especially in PG accommodations where cost-cutting is the name of the game, I am sceptical of whether CCTV works, and how well it works.
B. Isolated and poorly lit areas are exactly where CCTVs are required most, but unfortunately, most CCTV surveillance happens within campuses or just outside, which is limiting. Poorly-lit public areas (such as narrow alleys, parks, or the common areas of market places) is where CCTV footage can be extremely useful, but because these are shared spaces, there is a diffusion of responsibility which results in harassment and theft. Improvement in these areas with better lighting and proper surveillance equipment would be more beneficial than having CCTV just as far as the outer gate of a college campus.
C. I personally have no issues with CCTV in these areas, as long as they are used for the express purpose of safety intervention and not moral policing or further exploitation.
D. I don’t think I would hesitate too much about asking for the footage, but I am aware that this confidence comes mostly because of my privileged background, and I know that not everyone might feel as comfortable coming forth to claim what they should rightfully have access to.