"They do work. They are an excellent tool," said Arbuse, giving graffiti as an example. If graffiti is found in a particular area of the school, safety agents can monitor video of that area more closely. "We've caught several kids doing graffiti that way," he said.
To Ken Trump, president of the Cleveland-based National School Safety and Security Services the pros and cons of cameras should be weighed as a potential tool – "a supplement to, but not a substitute for, a more comprehensive school safety program."
"Cameras do serve as a deterrent to the many who are deterrable, but they also provide evidence for those who are not," Trump said.
But video surveillance is a relatively new technology, and doubts exist about the future ramifications of retaining footage of student activity without proper supervision. "There are also concerns about data retention: will this follow people for the rest of their lives?" asked Melissa Ngo, senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington, D.C.-based research center that focuses on civil liberties and electronic monitoring. "As technology changes and people use it more and more, it creates the ability for every mistake you make to follow you throughout your life."
Especially when doubt exists as to cameras' real deterrent effect, some wonder whether it's worth taking those risks. In England, one of the world's most heavily-videoed societies, a study by the Home Office showed that surveillance cameras do not significantly reduce violent crime.
Meanwhile, other methods of reducing school violence and increasing safety for students and teachers have proven effective in other school districts – and at a fraction of the cost of video surveillance.
Proactive mediation efforts known as "positive behavioral support" underway in select city schools and have reduced incidents of school crime and misconduct, said NYCLU field organizer Chloe Dugger, citing larger programs in Los Angeles and Chicago public schools as models.
Mentoring programs, adult and student mediators, and other behavioral support programs not only examine root causes of school violence and misconduct, but they are also less costly and confrontational, Dugger said. This August, U.S. Senators Barack Obama and Richard Durbin, and U.S. Rep. Phil Hare, all Illinois Democrats, introduced into Congress the Positive Behavioral for Effective Schools Act, which would secure resources to expand programs across the nation that led to 38 percent decreases in suspension rates in some suburban Chicago school districts.
Ngo of EPIC condemned the IPDVS program as a waste of taxpayer money and limited school funding. "New York Ciy is spending $120 million on unproven camera systems, on something that will not secure the schools," she said. "It's not as if school budgets are unlimited."
