Introduction

Abstract

At 10.25 on a hot Wednesday evening the duty surveillance officer spotted an all-too-familiar sign. A red blip was showing quite clearly on the geographic information system (GIS) screen covering the northwest boundary segment of the Norville social housing scheme. A juvenile was clearly breaking the area curfew and was heading towards the upper income gated community of Eastbury. This was the first time that Billy Gardom had been left on his own in the control centre at Compliance Security Ltd; after all he had only been in the post for two weeks, having been dishonourably discharged from the armed forces after a random drug test found traces of cocaine in his system. However, drawing on his experience as a navigator in a third-generation Challenger tank, he adeptly scanned the bank of multiplex monitors and clicked to full screen mode to home in on the closest camera viewpoints. Feeding in the GIS coordinates to the camera software, Gardom panned, tilted and zoomed in on the miscreant. Scrolling through the facial recognition programme for all tagged juveniles in the northwest sector, the screen rapidly highlighted the name and previous convictions of Jamie Watt, aged 12, from Byard Crescent. Watt was a notorious crack addict who was almost certainly going to try to break into the fortified enclave at Eastbury, so that he could steal to raise cash for his next fix. Gardom immediately called up the social services rapid response van, which, as good fortune would have it, was already patrolling in the vicinity. Gardom was relieved that, as Watt was a juvenile, he could call social services, rather than the overstreched probation squad.