Last week's attempted car bombings in London and Glasgow again underlined the efficacy of closed-circuit television (CCTV), which is why we fail to understand the Jamaican Government's apparently less-than-full and eager embrace of the system.

Although, to be fair, Dr. Peter Phillips, the Minister of National Security, does from time to time pay lip service to the idea and has caused it to be dabbled with in cursory fashion. So, there are a handful of police-operated CCTV cameras in Kingston, Montego Bay and elsewhere around the island.

That, however, is hardly good enough if Jamaica is serious about fighting crime and employing all the tools available to counteract this most potent threat to the stability and development of the country - which is something that the British clearly understand.

Indeed, across Britain, there are more than a million CCTV cameras. It is difficult for people to move in a public space without being captured on film and being digitally recorded. It might be expected that wide surveillance of the public will raise the hackles of civil libertarians pressing the cause of privacy.

The fact, though, is that the British public, already accustomed to CCTV surveillance in the enforcement of traffic laws, understands that it is part of the price they pay for security. Years ago, CCTV cameras helped the police respond to the violence that followed weekend binge-drinking by young people. These days, CCTV cameras help investigators to track terrorists, such as after the bus and tube stations bombings two years ago, and last week's incident of cars with explosives being left in west London.

We believe that as good as these devices have been in helping to identify and track wrongdoers, their greater value has been as deterrents. More people, we feel, do not commit crimes for fear that their images will be captured and that they will be identified and caught. Simple!

Not simple enough, it seems, for the Jamaican Government, given the fiasco of the police's deployment of a few cameras in downtown Kingston in such fashion that they were vandalised and stolen without anyone identifying the thieves. That bad start was only symptomatic of the poor planning that led to the introduction of CCTV without appropriate facilities for the monitoring of what they recorded.

It is time, we feel, for the authorities to make a serious go at the initiative, starting with four areas of the city of Kingston - Half-Way Tree, Cross Roads, New Kingston and downtown Parade - which would be fully covered by cameras. Having secured these crucial commercial hubs, deployment would take place elsewhere.

There may be concerns that these cameras would be vandalised, as was the case with the first set, but it only takes imagination for their discreet placement.

The Government may claim cost to be a deterrent. The technology, however, is not particularly expensive and, in any event, until we can afford the very best, there are cheap and simple.