The Maximum Surveillance Society by Gary Armstrong Clive Norris

Author:Gary Armstrong, Clive Norris [Gary Armstrong, Clive Norris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781859732267
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 1999-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

As these incidents make clear, there is no simple correspondence between the discovery of criminal activity and the resulting deployment and arrest. Lesser assaults when perpetrated by men on men outside nightclubs resulted in police officers being deployed and arrests being made. However, the images from the screen are filtered through an organisational lens which accords meaning, status and priority to events. It will come as no surprise to critics of the police handling of domestic violence (Edwards 1989; Stanko 1985) that the existence of ‘objective’ evidence led to neither a protective response in the first instance to prevent the assault occurring nor, once it had occurred, a legalistic response to arrest the perpetrator. As Edwards has argued the police have always concerned themselves more with public order than private violence, and this was deemed as essentially a private matter, albeit occurring in public space.

Moreover, this example gives credence to Brown’s assertion that the essentially male gaze of CCTV, has little Felevance for the security of women in town centres and may indeed undermine it by offering the rhetoric of security rather than providing the reality (Brown 1998). CCTV also fosters a male gaze in the more conventional and voyeuristic sense, with its pan-tilt and zoom facilities the thighs and cleavages of the scantily clad are an easy target for those male operators so motivated. Indeed, 10 per cent of all targeted surveillances on women, and 15 per cent of operator-initiated surveillance were for apparently voyeuristic reasons outnumbering protective surveillance by five to one. Moreover, the long understood relationship between cars and sex provides operators and police with other chances for titillation:

01.00 – On the first night shift the operator is keen to show me all his job entails. Eventually I am taken, via the camera, to ‘Shaggers Alley’, an area of a car park near the railway station which, by virtue of having a large wall covered in ivory and being a dead end to traffic, is the most discreet town centre place for punters who have picked up prostitutes soliciting from an adjacent industrial estate about a mile away. Whilst this location is out of the way to passers-by many a punter and indeed a happy couple not involved in a financial transaction are unaware of the reach of the all-seeing camera whose job is facilitated by a large and powerful car park light which does not leave much to the imagination of the observer.

Clearly visible on this night thanks to the cameras’ ability to zoom in and look into cars is a male in his late 20s sitting in the driver’s seat with what can only be described as an expression of glee as a female, kneeling on the passenger seat performs fellatio on him. Her hair and head are noticeably bouncing up and down for around two minutes. When the performance is over the woman is clearly visible topless in the front seat. From beginning to end this scenario is put onto the police monitor, the

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