This document provides a review of current surveillance system infrastructures and goals; it discusses the importance of understanding and developing surveillance policies and practices; identifies focus areas and ways to incorporate community voices; informs how agencies can assess surveillance system performance and create a plan to overcome constraints; and it gives insights into how to implement and maintain a plan, once developed, and how to continue monitoring the surveillance system for optimal performance.
The guidance provided in this publication is based on a review of evidence-based research, reference materials, and a 2018 project that had the goal of optimizing the Milwaukee Police Department’s (MPD) public surveillance system. Through the MPD partnership with the Urban Institute, the optimization project identified how to improve MPD’s camera program and used best practices to develop and put those improvements into effect, and then assessed those improvements’ impacts on crime and public safety. This guide elaborates on eight steps for maximizing public surveillance programs’ impacts on crime control and prevention. It focuses on generally applicable steps that stakeholders and decisionmakers can take, and questions they can consider in order to optimize surveillance systems. This document aims to help law enforcement agencies to identify surveillance goals, consider their systems’ limitations, and to develop strategies for implementing meaningful improvements that are tailored to their specific needs.