TRACKING A SUSPICIOUS PERSON USING CCTV: BUT WHAT DO WE MEAN BY SUSPICIOUS BEHAVIOUR?

A number of examples illustrate that the police can make mistakes in identifying suspicious behaviour. Criminals will try to blend in and not draw attention to their behaviour and so a fundamental question emerges with the use of CCTV: what do we mean by suspicious behaviour? A laboratory experiment and field based survey were conducted to investigate different concepts of suspicious behaviour. The findings illustrate that people can interpret innocent behaviour as potentially suspicious and that they also have consistent ideas of what behaviours are suspicious across different locations and public spaces. The work is being developed into a basic framework for profiling suspicious behaviour in different contexts.