I’VE never understood people who complain about the proliferation of CCTV cameras in our town centres and neighbourhoods these days.

Privacy campaign groups like Big Brother Watch believe there is excessive use of cameras across the country, but if you’re not doing anything wrong, what is the problem with being officially observed?

Like many people, I believe we gain far more than we lose from the widespread installation of CCTV.

Police chiefs say Bolton’s 100 or so cameras are as vital in the fight against crime as DNA or fingerprints.

Yes, they cost almost £650,000 each year, but that seems a decent investment for not only catching criminals but deterring some in the future.

Bolton Council also says the cameras are essential for public safety and are only installed in places where it has been established they are needed.

How many times in this newspaper have you seen CCTV pictures of someone police needed to talk to in connection with a crime?

Resulting prosecutions show this system works, prompting the public to contact police with information relating to filmed individuals.

Figures show there are 51,600 council-controlled CCTV cameras across the UK, costing £315 million over the last four years.

I agree with Big Brother Watch that they shouldn’t be a substitute for police officers and should form only part of the response to crime, but they provide a constant overview that would be nearly impossible to gain in any other way.

Using police intelligence and crime figures, cameras can be installed in places which are likely to prove useful in tracking criminals and in preventing criminal situations from developing. We acknowledge that technology generally has become a major force in crime-fighting and cameras are no different.

In a perfect world, we wouldn’t need them.

But the reality is that they provide peace of mind for law-abiding citizens in 2012 and make those other citizens bent on breaking the law think twice about their actions.

And every conviction that has been helped by the use of CCTV footage is another timely warning to society’s scum that Big Brother is indeed watching them — and Big Brother is working for the good guys.