Nearly half of the security cameras in the New York City subway system don’t work. That may seem like cause for alarm, and it may be from a financial standpoint — NYC isn’t getting a lot of return on its investment.

From a broader security standpoint, I don’t find this particularly disturbing. As the article points out, crime is down as ridership increases. Reducing the number of police officers on patrol in the subway (as NYC is doing) is more likely to facilitate increased criminality. A camera can catch many things on film, but the presence of law enforcement officers provides intangible benefits that technology cannot. The would-be Millenium Bomber was stopped by a border patrol agent who interviewed him and thought that something was “hinky” about his behavior. That hinkiness involved explosives, and the plot was foiled. Cameras don’t spot “hinky” like people can.

Security expert Bruce Schneier has been talking about this on his blog (emphasis on the Dubai assassination), and provides a fuller discussion of security cameras in this article on CNN.com:

If universal surveillance were the answer, lots of us would have moved to the former East Germany. If surveillance cameras were the answer, camera-happy London, with something like 500,000 of them at a cost of $700 million, would be the safest city on the planet.

We didn’t, and it isn’t, because surveillance and surveillance cameras don’t make us safer. The money spent on cameras in London, and in cities across America, could be much better spent on actual policing.

Security cameras have not proven a great deterrent to crime or terrorism. The attacks on September 11^th and the London commuter bombings were not stopped by pre-attack footage of the perpetrators’ activities. Creating a surveillance state may make some people feel safer, but the resources can be better used elsewhere.

Insecurity Cameras is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Senator Jim Webb (D-Va) is calling for a national commission to review the American criminal justice system from top to bottom.    Good for him.  With more than seven million people under criminal justice supervision (prison, parole, probation), a thorough review is desperately needed.  You can tell that Webb is new to the Congress because he is raising a subject that most of the long term incumbents would rather not discuss.  As Glenn Greenwald observes:

For a Senator like Webb to spend his time trumpeting the evils of excessive prison rates, racial disparities in sentencing, the unjust effects of the Drug War, and disgustingly harsh conditions inside prisons is precisely the opposite of what every single political consultant would recommend that he do.  There’s just no plausible explanation for what Webb’s actions other than the fact that he’s engaged in the noblest and rarest of conduct:  advocating a position and pursuing an outcome because he actually believes in it and believes that, with reasoned argument, he can convince his fellow citizens to see the validity of his cause.  And he is doing this despite the fact that it potentially poses substantial risks to his political self-interest and offers almost no prospect for political reward.  Webb is far from perfect — he’s cast some truly bad votes since being elected — but, in this instance, not only his conduct but also his motives are highly commendable.

Read the whole thing.

And speaking of Glenn Greenwald, he will be here at Cato this Friday to discuss his new study for Cato, Drug Decriminalization in Portugal.  Portugal is treating drug use as a health problem, not a crime problem, and it is working rather well.  When Senator Webb’s commission gets assembled, this report ought to be at the top of  its reading list.

To register for the Greenwald forum, go here.  For a discussion on mass incarceration, go here.  For more Cato work on crime and drugs, go here and here.

Jim Webb and Criminal Justice is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog