What Are the Positive and Negative Effects of Camera Surveillance?

The use of video recording has greatly increased since the 1990's.  In forensics, for example, video recording, or camera surveillance, has become a vital part of the evidence in a crime.  In Videotape, Don Delillo describes a girl recording the murder of an average man in his car.  It became "a famous murder because it [was] ... on tape", but the tape has been squandered (Delillo).  Delillo evaluates that "crime ... has found its medium", "the idea of taping and playing", but despite its aid in crime investigation, the media has misused crime footage (Delillo).  

Camera surveillance has decreased crime rates in America since the 1990's.  According to GCN, "In Baltimore, officials installed 500 cameras mostly in a 50-block downtown area, ... and saw crime rates drop steadily" (GCN).  Although video supervision has not helped drop crime rates in all areas, it is true that the "violent crime rates of 2010 were 1/3 the rates of 1994" (WANTTOKNOW.INFO).  In addition, the U.S. Department of Justice statistically presents that violent crime rates have dropped by nearly 60% from 1994 to 2010 (UCR).  Since camera footage is considered hard evidence in an investigation, shouldn't individuals in all areas of the U.S. be compelled to not commit crime?  

Although video recording has helped crime rates drop, it has been misused when shown to the public.  Videotape mentions that "some central authority, the police ... the district attorney or the TV station, decided there was nothing else you had to see" (Delillo).  That is, authorities as well as the media have misapplied this crime evidence that it has become nothing but "cheap mass production, [of] the sequence of repeated images and victims" (Delillo).  Can an overplay or an underplay of video surveillance contribute to the public's disregard for the viewing of crime?