Panopticism In Modern Society

Whilst researching panopticism, I found this article on CCTV within towns and cities, originally published in 1995 by Stephen Graham, John Brooks and Dan Heery, Centre for Urban Technology.
The article was written around the time that CCTV was becoming a must have for authorities across the world. According to the article, CCTV was praised and welcomed by the masses and notably one case in particular which sparked off the sensation, the murder of James Bulger.

James Bulger was abducted and murdered in Bootle, Liverpool, in 1993. CCTV caught the pair of 10 year olds abducting Bulger, aged 2, before he was beaten and murdered.

This was key publicity for CCTV, showing clear benefits to it's installation which had also previously been viewed as beneficial.

The article goes on to mention how the public views CCTV,

"But these aggregated statistics need to be treated with caution. They are likely to mask a complex picture of public reaction. For example, young men are much more suspicious of the systems because they feel more at risk from the potential negative effects of CCTV (Honess and Charman, 1992; Centre for Research on Crime, Policing and the Community, 1993). Karen Evans found recently that many black males already feel excluded from shopping malls where they experience intense scrutiny from security guards (Evans, 1995). In many shopping malls and other 'private public spaces' there is already "a heavy concentration on the exclusion of 'undesirable' young people" (Sparks, quoted in Mi hill, 1993). Women have also been found to be more concerned than men about the civil liberty implications of CCTV. Moreover, whilst they may support CCTV in reducing petty crime, young women have also been shown to doubt the effectiveness of CCTV in actually preventing physical and sexual assault compared to other measures such as improved street lighting or increased police patrols (Honess and Charman, 1992; 11)."

Although I have not read the referenced articles I find the quotes used to be very interesting. From this paragraph I see CCTV makes certain people who would be classed as a 'nuisance' or a 'trouble-maker' and feel although they are, to at least some extent, the ones being 'watched' as such. Especially with the reference to black males feeling already excluded from shopping centres due to their skin colour providing adequate information on them as a person upon which they are judged and surveyed.

Personally, I'd say that crime is feasible in all cultures and generations, with no focus at all on ethnicity and a obvious bias towards the youth.

CCTV's main involvement in society is as a deterrent, which is a form of panopticism in modern society, even if no one is watching the other side the presence is very prominent.