ABSTRACT
This chapter traces some of the specific practical challenges that have accompanied the migration of surveillance technology from the city to the provinces. It then seeks to uncover why CCTV has been introduced to towns and villages which have relatively low rates of crime and, therefore, little apparent need for such technology. The chapter focuses on the rural video surveillance schemes developed by public authorities to keep watch over the streets and public spaces of town and village centres designed expressly to aid in the fight against crime and disorder the official raison d'tre of CCTV. Rural towns tend to have relatively small zones of commercial, retail and leisure activity. Crime displacement is a complex process that can be spatial, temporal, or in the type of offence committed and is argued by critics to be an inevitable consequence of the uneven distribution of situational crime prevention measures such as CCTV.
