Surveillance and Subjectivity: A GIS-Based Study of Fear of Crime and CCTV Distribution

Crime is an ever-present aspect of daily life, encompassing both physical and virtual forms.How individuals perceive the fear of physical crime is inherently subjective, influenced by factors such as time, location, personal attitudes, behaviors, and individual personality.The increasing adoption of digital technologies, particularly the widespread deployment of Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras in various commercial and public settings, has brought into front their usage in crime detection and in enhancing physical safety in urban spaces.The present research introduces a novel geoinformatics-based methodology designed to quantitatively assess the subjective perception of safety among people in urban areas.The assessment and monitoring of the fear of crime have a longstanding history and are invaluable tools for law enforcement.The quantitative analysis identified a correlation between the spatial location of security cameras and urban areas that people perceive as dangerous.