Surveillance and Social Control

Systematic Surveillance

• Everyone watches everyone else.

• Thompson: Politicians fear media surveillance, which may uncover damaging information on them.

• Widespread camera ownership allows citizens to control the controllers by filming police wrongdoing.

Liquid Surveillance

• All the ways that we are monitored, from number plate recognition and store cards to CCTV.

• Means that we are constantly monitored and aware of that monitoring.

• Refers to your digital footprint that can be used to infringe your civil liberties and protect you.

Panopticon

• A prison design where the prisoner has their cell visible to the guards from a central position.

• The guards are not visible to the prisoners.

• This means that the prisoners behave as if they never know if they are being watched or not.

Self-Surveillance

• People monitor themselves and their behaviour due to the fear of being judged by others.

• This is particularly prominent in new mothers who fear being judged as bad mothers.

Surveillance Societies

• Thinker: Lyon

• Explanation:

  • Modern society and technology have reached the point where our lives are quite transparent, and there is a lack of privacy.

  • Our every move is monitored, but it has become so routine that we no longer notice or consider it consciously.

Disciplinary Societies

• Thinker: Foucault

• Explanation:

  • Societies which do not use physical punishment to control its people, but control the mind through surveillance.

  • This has led to Carceral Culture (prison-like), where the disciplinary power has moved to other areas of society beyond the criminal justice system, such as teachers, social workers, and psychiatrists who monitor the population.

Synoptic Surveillance

• Thinker: Mathieson

• Explanation:

  • Everyone is watching everyone else through the power of the media and social media.

  • This can be through cameras, dashcams, and social media.

  • This leads to greater self-surveillance.

  • These items have also allowed society to exercise some control over the controllers, such as filming police wrongdoing.

Post Panoptical Society

• Thinkers: Bauman and Lyon

• Explanation:

  • It is not just the thought of being watched but the knowledge that we are actually being monitored that controls our behavior.

  • Liquid surveillance means that we are constantly being monitored, from where we drive to what we buy.

Kilburn Experiment

• Thinkers: Newburn and Heyman

• Explanation:

  • CCTV is as much a protection as an erosion of civil liberties.

  • They were given access to Kilburn custody suites for 18 months.

  • Saw that CCTV could be used by defence lawyers as much as by the prosecution.

  • It can also be used to protect law enforcement against claims of brutality.

Actuarial Justice

• Thinkers: Feeley and Simon

• Explanation:

  • New technology of power is not interested in rehabilitation but in preventing offending through the use of similar algorithms to insurance actuaries.

  • Airports use this to determine who to stop and profiling.

  • It identifies and classifies groups based on perceived levels of dangerousness.

Is surveillance a good or bad form of social control?

• Yes:

  • Helps reduce the fear of crime:

    • People feel less of a fear of being a victim of crime when they are aware of CCTV and other surveillance systems, as they believe that there is a greater chance of the perpetrator being caught, so they are less likely to commit a crime.

  • Helps to fight against terrorism:

    • Using data mining and social media monitoring, links can be made between disparate terrorist groups.

  • Provides evidence:

    • Both for the prosecution and the defence.

• No:

  • Oppressive form of social control:

    • A few watching the many allows the ruling class to shape the behavior of the working class.

  • Limited evidence that it changes behavior:

    • Norris found that although CCTV reduced crime in car parks, it did little to reduce other sorts of crime.

    • Loveday and Gill: Burglars, shoplifters, and fraudsters were not put off by CCTV.

  • Erosion of civil liberties:

    • Every action we take is monitored. There is no such thing as privacy, and our actions are used against us at any time.