Jeremy Bentham was wrong!
Jeremy Bentham was wrong!
Actually, he was right about most things, but wrong about his best known invention...
I've been a Bentham fan for many years. The philosopher was an early advocate for Women's Rights, Animal Rights, Homosexual Equality - what's not to like about the guy?
But he's probably better known for asking for his body to be stuffed and displayed in a cabinet at University College London…
…and for his invention of the “Panopticon". It was a design for institutions like prisons and asylums, and many prisons were built on this model, in America and Britain.
It's the Panopticon which has been proved wrong, remarkably, by the modern “Surveillance State”.
I used to think Jeremy would think he was in Heaven, if we could transport him to our present-day cities, with their CCTV cameras on every street corner, every public building, and millions of residential properties.
But his theory that everyone would behave if they thought they were constantly being watched, has turned out to be a fallacy.
This was brought home recently in the case of the Clapham Alkali attacker in January this year. Abdul Ezedi travelked to London, threw the corrosive substance over a woman known to him, and assaulted her children, sparking a 3 week-long manhunt.
His body was found in the Thames and identified on 23 February.
The police had to trace his movements using cctv footage. They had to obtain this footage from owners of premises, such as a Tesco supermarket he went into, and street cctv cameras.
From the Independent:
But here's the thing. As a police expert told reporters, no one normally watches these cameras in real life. The police have to trawl through hours of nothing-much-happening to find their man. Anyone who has ever set up a camera in their back garden to catch wildlife in action can confirm that.
We are constantly told we live in a “Surveillance State”, but it's more accurately a “Menaced State”.
The ever present threat of the cctv cameras is intended to scare you into behaving, at least in public, just like Bentham's Panopticon was designed to do, even - especially - if no one is actually watching them.
In the last few weeks in New York, there has been more proof that criminals take absolutely no account of being filmed while they carry out their assaults.
First we saw several women on social media, reporting that they had been randomly punched in the head, in the street, by men, mostly from behind (as cowards do), and they made their complaints to the police.
These women were immediately subjected to a storm of misogynistic abuse online. They were all making it up for social media clicks, apparently.
But now this has happened to a well known actor (well-known to Americans, I had to Google him)!
News report from CBS New York:
This is my comment on the video: “I wonder if this will be taken seriously. All the women who have reported being randomly punched in NY have been mocked, and told they are making it up for social media likes”.
I'm being sarcastic. I'm sure Mr Buscemi's assault WILL be taken seriously by the police. That little word “Mister” in front of your name makes all the difference. (And being part of the Hollywood elite, of course).
But as for Jeremy, he must be spinning in his glass cabinet at UCL. The perfect combination of his Panopticon and modern technology, our so-called “Surveillance State”, something he might have dreamt about, has proved to be worse than useless to deter street crime.
Because criminals know that no one is actually watching. Those little mechanical eyes are an empty threat.
The chances of getting away with it are so high, and the possibility of punishment so minimal, that they feel free to act on their impulses.
The only people who seem to be scared of CCTV are the car drivers, who want their journeys to be unimpeded by speed traps, one-way streets, parking restrictions, and “15-minute cities”!