LETTER: Cameras fighting crime in Newcastle, not just snooping

Bonnie Coppin,Dave Chandler
Saturday 09 September 1995 23:02 BST
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IF RESIDENTIAL monitoring had been first introduced in Bradford, Leeds or Birmingham, there would have been justifiable protest on the grounds that there was a racist agenda behind the concern about crime.

It was not the authorities but journalists who put West End people in the frame, using them to further their ideas of a morally irresponsible "underclass", largely comprised of violent white unemployed males.

Once liberal commentators had turned social deprivation into a problem of white male working class culture, the funding was available to make the West End a showcase for a surveillance society.

Bonnie Coppin and Dave Chandler

Newcastle upon Tyne.

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