Surveillance Cameras in Public Schools Do More Good Than Harm
CON (4 arguments)
The Fourth Amendment protects everyone from unreasonable searches, which video cameras do. Surveillance cameras view children without them knowing or without their consent, meaning they can see whatever they wish to see. The Supreme Court ruled that "What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection, but what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected.
Also, The images of students captured on security videotapes contain personally identifiable student
information and are considered confidential in accordance with the Family Educational Rights
and Privacy Act
In January 2008, cameras at a school in Kanton, Ohio, recorded 10- to 14-year-old boys and girls undressing in adjacent changing areas in preparation for basketball, and stored the images on a computer accessible through the Internet, according to a federal lawsuit filed by parents.
During a 2003 girls’ basketball game at Livingston Middle School in Overton County, Tennessee, visiting team members noticed a security camera in the girls’ locker room. It turned out the camera had recorded images of the team members in their undergarments when they changed their clothes. Several other students had been similarly videotaped over the previous months. Additionally, video evidence shows images of naked students were assessed over the Internet 98 times from June 2002 through January 2003. In addition to placing a camera in a very inappropriate location, the school district’s lack of computer security protections failed to restrict access to the images of the children on the school’s website. Both the inappropriate camera location and lack of computer security protections were cited as violations of the children’s privacy rights. The scandal led to Brannum v. Overton County School Board, a lawsuit on behalf of 24 students.
The recording of audio conversations is likely to violate Title I of the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 as well as state wiretapping laws, but many public schools still do it. In fact, over 80% of public schools with security cameras also record audio conversations.
Cameras are expensive, with most high-end systems costing $500,000 or more, plus annual maintenance fees of about $200,000. In a time when schools across the country are having budget cuts, good security cameras costing up to 7,000 dollars EACH would be a huge financial burden on the school which would more than likely result in the lay-offs of employee's, academic classes being dropped, extracurricular activities such as band and athletics being eliminated, etc. simply to buy security camera's. Also, judge, security cameras don’t always work forever, so no matter what they are going to have to get maintained or repaired, which is more money spent. In fact, according to PBS, the security cameras installed at most public schools today have to be repaired at least twice a month, resulting in about $10,000 spent every month just for cameras. In addition, security cameras cost up to $15,000 for installation.
Matthew Mayer and Peter Leone, scientists at Columbia University, conducted an empirical study involving almost 7000 public school students, finding that schools’ reliance on surveillance cameras may lead to more disorder, crime, and violence. When public schools get security cameras, they think every action can be classified as good or bad, resulting in more bad actions. When schools get cameras, they are three times more likely to arrest more teenagers for doing nothing wrong, than schools that don’t have cameras. Judge, this means the schools should not be deciding if these actions are good or bad, because it results in an increase in crime.
The public schools already are manned by 4,625 safety agents – a larger force than the entire police departments of Baltimore, Boston, or San Diego. In addition to this, the new systems called for in Local Law 52 include cameras linked by a network to a main server in each school. Video is watched live by school safety agents from a monitoring console. Design requirements state that “both live and archived video can be viewed locally on LAN (Local Area Networks) and remotely over DOE WAN (Wireless Area Networks).” This means that every action you perform will be watched, in turn harming the reputation of every student if they do one bad action.
Putting up cameras will make students feel distrusted. If cameras are put inside of the school, students will think that the administration believes that they will do mischievous things inside of the school. This will create a more hostile environment because it will cause students to think of themselves as troublemakers, which is something we don’t want in school. In fact, accordin gto ABC News, when security cameras where placed inside of 20 public schools, the trust of the students with the administration in 19 of the schools dropped over 67%. Likewise, when the schools had no cameras, the trust rate increased back to normal. "There's no indication that there's a need for this kind of prison-style security. The message it sends to students is 'We don't trust you, and everybody is a suspect'" states Amanda Golden, professor at UCLA. Why do we want our students to distrust their schools? If a student has done nothing wrong, we should not be punishing them by having these cameras watching their every move.