Self Check Q&A

Consider the below questions to check your understanding of topics covered in the book. Click on the question to reveal the answer.

1. What does the acronym HOLMES stand for?

Answer: Home Office Large Major Enquiry System: used to cross-reference and retrieve data collated in crime investigations

2. What percentage of the world’s CCTV cameras was it estimated are deployed in Britain?

Answer: 20 per cent

3. In relation to what three types of crime did police officers suggest CCTV was particularly effective?

Answer: public order offences, assault, and theft

4. Against what sources of information do Thames Valley police check information gathered via ANPR?

Answer: Police National Computer, Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, Local Force Intelligence systems and motor insurers databases

5. What percentage of the British population support, in general terms, the use of cameras to police speeding drivers?

Answer: 75 per cent

6. What is COMPSTAT?

Answer: a police management tool that coordinates ‘up-to-date computerized crime data, crime analysis, and advanced crime mapping as the bases for regularized, interactive crime strategy meetings which hold managers accountable for specific crime strategies and solutions in their areas’ (Silverman 2006: 268)

7. In Britain in the 1960s Computer-Aided Dispatch systems were introduced in the development of what model of policing?

Answer: Unit Beat Policing

8. Who developed a model prison that enshrined the concept of the panoptican?

Answer: Jeremy Bentham

9. To what broader social and political processes do Hudson (2003) and Loader (1999) relate the development of technology in policing?

Answer: private prudentialism, consumer culture, and neo-liberalism

10. What three perspectives on video recording of police behaviour did Sandhu and Haggerty (2016) identify?

Answer: camera shy; habituated; strategic advantages