Do CCTV's deter terrorists?

There has been a surge in the amount of low-intensity warfare as a tool to propagate terror. The obvious question to ask is: why has there been a spate of low-intensity bombings in local densely populated areas as opposed to say, the high-intensity bombing of a strategic location?
First, the cost of planning a low-intensity operation is much lower. Second, the cost of executing it by placing ammonium nitrate inside a tiffin box atop a cycle is also very small. Third, the benefit gained by the terrorists through media coverage of the destruction and accompanying terror is relatively significant and contributes to creating distrust between communities. Fourth, the extremely low risk of getting caught makes engaging in terrorism more lucrative for a few local people and organisations funding such activities.
This means that there are broadly only three ways in which we can reduce bombings in low-intensity attacks and not compromise the security of strategic locations:

• To raise the costs for terrorists of planning and executing low-intensity attacks.
• To reduce the “benefit” the terrorists obtain from such attacks.
• To increase their risk of getting caught.

Figure 1 illustrates the equilibrium number of bombings terrorists execute. The two black diagonal lines represent marginal cost and marginal benefit curves, i.e., the planned cost or benefit of bombing one more location in a single terrorist attack. Equilibrium is reached where these two curves intersect. Here, implementing (a) would mean a parallel upward shift of the marginal cost curve and implementing (b) would lead to a shift of the marginal benefit curve leftward. These have not been shown on the diagram. Acting on (a) and (b) by interfering with efficient market mechanisms like putting controls on use of fertilizers or on free media is not advisable as it can have negative spillovers and inefficiency losses.

The only convincing way of dealing with terrorism of this nature is to increase a terrorist’s risk of getting caught on camera in at least one of the locations. This not only raises the costs of planning an attack (making the curve move upward), but also makes the marginal cost curve steeper than before as chances of getting caught increase like an ad valorem tax. The marginal cost curve now becomes the red line and the equilibrium number of bombings carried out in one attack comes down dramatically. By exponentially raising the costs of carrying out one extra bombing, two effects may take place. First, there would be a decline in the number of bombings per terrorist incident (as shown in the graph). Second, there would be a greater incentive to go in for one high-intensity blast at a strategic location. This would work like a substitution effect, whereby a worker tends to reduce the amount of work if marginal tax rate increases. However, it would be a preferable situation for India if we consider this a zero-sum game, whereby raising the costs for terrorists works in the same manner as increasing benefits for India.
Installing Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras in susceptible places like markets, shrines, hospitals and colleges would help garner information on terrorists, should they decide to attack. These cameras may be visible or hidden. These can also be used to detect traffic violations, violence, drug abuse, shoplifting and property theft. Britain had started using CCTV cameras to combat IRA terrorism during the 1970’s and today has the highest amount of camera surveillance in the world. In London, there is a good chance that one will be captured by over 300 cameras in a single day. The only dilemma facing the authorities should be whether to install fixed cameras or Wi-fi enabled cameras. The latter are more expensive, but give the option of higher mobility and thus may indeed be the better option since terrorism seems to be a long-run issue. There are also costs of maintenance and staff to monitor the pictures that must be taken into account in any cost-benefit analysis.
Although studies show a decline in vandalism in London buses and reduced robberies in London Underground stations when they are equipped with CCTV cameras, there is very little quality evidence to suggest the extent of their achievement. This is mainly because of the problem of lack of randomisation when the cameras are installed.
For instance, in order to quantify the degree of success of a drug, a pharmaceutical company will undertake randomised trials, in which a random sample of people is given the drug and others are not. Everything else remains the same for these two groups. This is helpful in finding the true extent of potency of a drug. Similarly, to find out if smaller class groups increase learning ability, a randomised solution has been carried out by economists in Israel. In another experiment, a bank in South Africa lent money at different rates to randomly selected individuals, in order to find its effect on non-performing assets.
Therefore, in order to judge the efficacy of cameras, the police would need to install these cameras at pre-planned locations in randomly selected cities (“treated” cities). The difference in terrorism and crime between the treated and the control cities would be monitored. If the difference changes significantly after the introduction of cameras, it would imply that surveillance is having an effect and, more importantly, the quantitative effect can be found. Furthermore, dummy cameras (which are readily available online) can be used in half the cities and real cameras in others to distinguish the effect of deterrence from just the perception of being under-watch and deterrence from actual catching and punishment.
The problem lies in implementing such an experiment on a large enough scale. In order to give policy recommendations, it is of great importance to delineate causal impacts of policies. Carrying out randomised social experiments will give a fillip to finding out “clean” effects of surveillance on terrorist activities.
Generally the police would like to set these cameras in cities where crime is expected to be high, but this would rule out a way to find the causal impact of CCTV on crime as there would be a selection bias. Moreover, it would be a multi-pronged approach (increased policing, hiring more personnel, etc.) to tackling crime and terrorism, and thus to isolate the impact of CCTV on crime would be impossible.
CCTV is also likely to change the behaviour of people who are not potential offenders. In a survey carried out in Germany to assess perceptions of people to CCTV, it was found that a majority of people like to have cameras installed in malls, banks, railway platforms, and along motorways. However, there is displeasure at placing them at the entrance of residential buildings, in public toilets and in changing or dressing rooms. There is a general concern that being constantly under inspection will adversely affect civil liberties.
Between 1996 and 1998, more than three quarters of the UK government spending on crime prevention went towards CCTV installation and monitoring. It has been shown that effects of CCTV on deterrence are short-lived and not persistent. For instance, the underlying patterns of car thefts in British cities re-emerged after three quarters of low-crime.
The Indian police are waking up to the yawning gap in their surveillance infrastructure. In a recent news article, it was predicted that by 2010, all NCR towns of Haryana would come under hi-tech CCTV surveillance through Wi-fi, hi-band and fiber based surveillance systems covering all major sensitive locations such as the expressway, malls and MNC offices, bus stands and railway stations. Even though there are no randomised studies on the benefits of installing these and several concerns on their use remain, there seems to be a consensus emerging on advantages of having “someone watching over us”.

Why did Punjab breed terror? A rationalist perspective

In many ways the story of Punjab is anomalous to the stylized facts of civil war literature. Empirical literature on civil wars points to a negative correlation between income and likelihood of conflict. There is also cross-country evidence to suggest that rough terrain contributes to greater possibility of violence. Both these facts did not hold in the case of Punjab. However, recent research on terrorism supports the view that terrorism is not correlated with poverty and lower education levels. This is consistent with terrorism in Punjab, where terrorists on average were moderately educated and came from families owning small and medium sized farms.

Having a rural base in Punjab was essential to the terrorist movement as this helped them remain hidden from the police forces. This was despite not having forest cover or rugged terrain. The key to inducing the local population not to denounce the rebels is local knowledge or information about who is doing what at the village level. Local knowledge allows the rebels to credibly threaten retribution for informing the police. Evidence from Algeria by Kalyvas (1999) suggests that ethnic insurgents use this informational advantage to a great extent, often threatening and inflicting harsh sanctions on their own people. In Punjab, kidnapping was an efficient technology used by terrorists to extract their rents and terrorism was informationally extremely localized, especially in villages. This suggests that farmers were deeply affected by terrorism and were acutely aware of the attacks due to a high degree of social capital locally.

The year 1984 saw the Indian Army being deployed in the state because of several incidents of terrorism. A separatist group, Khalistan Commando Force proclaimed the independence of Punjab (calling it "Khalistan") and they along with Bhindranwale took refuge in the Golden Temple, the holy shrine for the Sikhs. In April, extremists simultaneously attacked thirty nine local railway stations located in twelve different districts. On 2nd June, the army sealed off Punjab from the rest of India and seven tanks rolled into the Golden Temple. As has been observed elsewhere, specific events suddenly mobilize large numbers through grievance and coordination and this seems to have been the case after Operation Bluestar. A couple of months later, Indira Gandhi was shot dead by two of her Sikh bodyguards.

In 1985, President’s rule was lifted with the Rajiv Gandhi-Longowal Peace Accord, which referred all contentious issues to several commissions. But the accord was never fully implemented by the central government. In May 1987, due to political instability, President’s rule was imposed again. It has been shown through a theoretical argument that a peace pact may increase conflict in later years because the extremist faction of the separatists would want to grab power from the moderates who signed the accord. This appears to have happened in Punjab.

The death toll due to terrorist violence rose from 1,333 in 1987 to 5,265 in 1991 and tapered to 871 in 1993. By 1994, the police under the leadership of K.P.S. Gill declared that terrorism had been defeated and that normalcy had returned. Along with an increase in police personnel, changes in foreign support due to sealing of borders with Pakistan and the curtailing of ISI funding by Benazir Bhutto contributed to usher in peace. This eventually resulted in both internally generated terrorism and external abetment being wiped out.

In the rationalist strand of explanations for civil conflict, the theory of commitment problems seems to fit the scenario of Punjab. Despite a series of negotiations, there was no breakthrough between the Centre and the separatists. This may have been because of two reasons. First, there were commitment problems, i.e. no credible commitment mechanism for the separatists to believe in the centre’s offers. This would mean that once the extremists handed over their weapons, there would be an incentive for the government to renege on its promises. This commitment problem is prevalent in many civil conflicts and usually can be solved through a credible third-party commitment agency or if the movement is crushed completely as was done in Punjab. Second, issue indivisibilities namely, river water sharing and Chandigarh being made capital of Punjab were issues that did not seem to have a bargaining equilibrium as there may have not been enough alternatives for the groups to choose from. This problem was accentuated by the divisions among the militant groups themselves despite trying to forge alliances through committees. Which of these reasons was more important is an open question, but I think that issue indivisibilities could have been resolved using monetary transfers, but trustworthiness of the government would have always been suspect (which is rational for the terrorists).

During 1987 to 1992, the agricultural growth rate plummeted from 6% to 2%. To analyze how terrorism impacted Punjab’s economy, it is critical to understand how violence affected investment decisions of firms and farmers. A likely mechanism through which terrorism affects investment is through firms facing the threat of extortion of their employees (human capital losses) or loss of property (physical capital losses). The threat of extortion may increase especially if the investment is visible to outsiders, for instance if the farmer has a tractor or a firm has a huge plant. Another mechanism could be through the risk of migration. Due to deterioration of such property rights, investment is likely to decrease. Also, as conflict increases, land would be more difficult to collateralize (and interest rates set higher). This would lead to a reduction in land investment. Terrorism may increase the risk of a regime change and the accompanying redistribution of land would make long-term investment unprofitable. An increase in the probability of dying would also make investment less attractive. Finally, an increased risk of migration would negatively impact investment.

Which of these factors was responsible for a decline in agricultural investment and shutting down of several factories can only be found out by ruling out the others. As of now, because of data availability issues, it is difficult to say which channel was the most important. However, regression analysis shows that violence leading to an increase in the probability of kidnapping (proxying for threat of extortion) turns out to be a significant channel. Such a channel has been ignored earlier in the empirical literature on conflict. It reinforces the anthropological stylized fact that individuals were well informed about terrorist activities. And this knowledge helped them better predict future kidnappings and reduce their investment accordingly.