London has 10,000 publicly funded crime-fighting spy cameras at a cost of USD400 million, but four out of five of the regions with the most cameras have a record of solving crime that is below average.
A comparison of the number of cameras in each London borough with the proportion of crimes solved there found that police are no more likely to catch offenders in areas with hundreds of cameras than in those with hardly any.
The figures were obtained using the U.K. Freedom of Information Act. [Evening Standard via Wired]