Is camera surveillance an effective measure of counterterrorism?

Alois Stutzer and Michael Zehnder

Defence and Peace Economics, 2013, vol. 24, issue 1, 1-14

Abstract: Camera surveillance has recently gained prominence in policy proposals on combating terrorism. We evaluate the instrument based on a comparative perspective and previous evidence on crime. We expect camera surveillance to have a relatively smaller deterrent effect on terrorism than on other forms of crime. In particular, we emphasize that: (i) terrorists have more opportunities for substitution; (ii) targets under camera surveillance might become more and not less attractive if terrorists aspire media attention; (iii) real-time interventions are limited as behaviour is only understood as suspicious in the light of hindsight; and (iv) closed-circuit television might crowd out social surveillance.

Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/10242694.2011.650481 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:defpea:v:24:y:2013:i:1:p:1-14

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/GDPE20

DOI: 10.1080/10242694.2011.650481

Access Statistics for this article

Defence and Peace Economics is currently edited by Professor Keith Hartley

More articles in Defence and Peace Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().