From the Dockyards to the Disney Store: Surveillance, Risk and Security in Liverpool City Centre

Abstract

This paper critically examines security provision and policing in Liverpool through analysing the development and consolidation of CCTV cameras in the city centre. The paper is less concerned with the technical question surrounding the relationship between CCTV and conventional crime control. Rather it is more concerned with placing the cameras within a broader economic, political and ideological context. In doing so it seeks to explore how the aim of creating a 'safe' and 'secure' city environment through defensible spaces has brought together the local authority, local businesses and public and private police who are involved with developing formal and informal security networks. An examination of the establishment and operation of CCTV in Liverpool city centre illustrates these themes and raises a series of important political and sociological questions regarding the operationalisation of power, the definitions of security, risk and order that underpin the camera network, the new sites of regulation and surveillance that are emerging as a result of the consolidation of the cameras particularly in relation to the militarization of city life and the intensification in the definition of public space as a site for consumptive purposes. The paper concludes with a consideration of the consequences of these developments in relation to recent debates about democratic accountability and the state of British politics.