Annual criminology lecture today looks at surveillance and closed-circuit TV

Professor Randy Lippert of the University of Windsor’s Department of Sociology, Anthropology & Criminology will discuss what happens when Crime Stoppers and closed-circuit television (CCTV) surveillance converge at York’s 2010 Annual Criminology Lecture.

“Capturing Criminals and the Public’s Imagination: What Happens when Crime Stoppers and CCTV Surveillance Converge” will take place today from 12:30 to 2pm in S701 Ross Building, Keele campus.

Lippert specializes in the sociology of governance and law. He is the author of Sanctuary, Sovereignty, Sacrifice: Canadian Sanctuary Incidents, Power and Law (University of British Columbia Press, 2005), an examination of illegal Canadian sanctuary practices, and the author and co-author of articles in international criminological and socio-legal journals on surveillance, private security and sanctuary practices.

His lecture draws on a major and recently concluded Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada-funded study of urban governance, security and CCTV surveillance in Canadian cities, as well as a 2007 co-edited issue of the Canadian Journal of Law and Society, and a more recent article, “Signs of the Surveillant Assemblage: Privacy Regulation, Urban CCTV and Governmentality”, which was published in Social & Legal Studies. Lippert is currently co-editing the forthcoming book Eyes Everywhere: The Global Growth of Camera Surveillance, which will look at issues related to CCTV surveillance practices in an international context.

A light lunch will be served at noon. Everyone is welcome to attend.

The event is co-sponsored by York’s Department of Social Science in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, Graduate Program in Socio-Legal Studies and the Law & Society Program. For more information, click here.