Bodycams in supermarkets: camera on, problem solved?

For years, supermarkets in the Netherlands have been grappling with a persistent problem: staff are increasingly facing verbal and physical aggression from customers. Albert Heijn receives thousands of reports of such incidents every year. To reduce this, the supermarket chain has launched a pilot scheme at four branches where security staff wear bodycams. The camera only switches on during an incident; the security guard announces this, and the customer can see exactly what is being filmed via a small screen on the camera. Footage is stored for a maximum of fourteen days and is accessible only to managers and security experts.  

Albert Heijn is not alone in this. Two years ago, Dirk introduced bodycams in a number of its branches, with team leaders and managers, rather than security guards, wearing the devices. Last month, the NS announced that all chief conductors will be issued with bodycams. Bodycams are therefore no longer a fringe experiment; you can find them in supermarkets, on public transport, and increasingly on the streets as well.   

What do we actually know about its effectiveness? 

The hope is that the visible presence of a camera will deter troublemakers and de-escalate violent situations. Albert Heijn cites the experiences of the police and special investigating officers, where bodycams have been in use for some time and have been positively evaluated. Dirk reports that the number of incidents in shops with bodycams has demonstrably decreased and that both staff and customers feel safer, but concrete figures are lacking. 

Schuilenburg is critical of that line of reasoning. He argues that people view cameras as a miracle cure: a universal panacea that could solve all problems. But the scientific evidence for the de-escalating effect of bodycams is more limited than is often suggested. “We know very little about the added value, and whether it has a preventive effect,” he explained in de Volkskrant. “When a new technology such as the bodycam is introduced, there is always a great deal of enthusiasm in the first few weeks and you also see an improvement in staff’s sense of safety. That is a sociological constant,” says Schuilenburg.  

But according to him, the real power of bodycams lies elsewhere: in the retrospective identification of perpetrators, and in the ability of organisations to learn from recorded footage how they can adapt their services to structurally reduce aggression. The latter is still happening far too rarely, says Schuilenburg: “With AI analysis of video and audio, much can be learnt from situations where aggression, panic and conflict arise between members of the public and professionals. Think of violence on public transport (special investigating officers); aggression during New Year’s Eve (emergency services); conversations delivering bad news (doctors or police officers); or the emotions during an emergency call.” 

Schuilenburg illustrates the risk of placing too much trust in technological solutions with a study carried out by one of his PhD students, Martijn Wessels. In The Hague, the police deployed a so-called violence detection tool: an AI system that was supposed to be able to detect, based on movement patterns, whether physical violence was about to break out. In practice, the system proved to suffer from a high number of false positives, amongst other things: a fluttering flag, an animated conversation or even a jumping dog was enough to set it off. Gradually, the police officers’ confidence in the AI application waned and it was used less and less. Following the research, the system was shut down. “The lesson is clear,” says Schuilenburg. “Technology that sounds like a solution can, in practice, generate more noise than clarity.” 

The legal framework: is it simply allowed?  

The use of bodycams by private parties is not prohibited by law, but is subject to strict conditions. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) stipulates that the processing of personal data must be lawful, fair and transparent, and must serve a legitimate purpose. Footage from a bodycam almost always contains personal data; every recorded image also contains data on people who happen to be nearby, customers who have done nothing wrong but are nevertheless captured on camera.  

The Dutch Data Protection Authority (AP), the Dutch regulator in the field of data protection, emphasised in a response to De Volkskrant that bodycams have a major impact on customers’ privacy and freedoms, “certainly on top of all the other CCTV surveillance in supermarkets”. The regulator states that bodycams may therefore only be used in exceptional cases. Supermarkets must be able to demonstrate that the measure is necessary, that the bodycams actually have the intended de-escalating effect, and that the footage is adequately secured. Responsibility for compliance with these rules lies with the organisation itself. 

Two key legal principles come into play here: proportionality and subsidiarity. Proportionality requires that the infringement of fundamental rights, in this case, the right to privacy and personal life, does not exceed what is strictly necessary to achieve the intended objective. Subsidiarity raises the question of whether the objective could not also be achieved by less intrusive means. It is precisely on this point that the academic debate offers interesting insights. 

A human-centred approach as an alternative: the power of informal surveillance  

Schuilenburg refers to empirical research on aggression prevention in public spaces. Several studies have shown that the deployment of recognisable individuals, whether or not wearing a high-visibility vest, who walk through a nightlife area or shopping street at busy times and make informal contact with visitors, is considerably more effective in preventing violence than camera surveillance. At Stadhuisplein in Eindhoven, it was found that a camera did not reduce violence, but that the visible presence of people capable of direct, human interaction did.  

This type of approach, also known as ‘informal surveillance’, capitalises on the human tendency to adapt behaviour in response to social interaction, rather than to technical and distant forms of control. Schuilenburg puts it this way: “Empathy arises precisely in the encounter.” It underlines that the choice to use bodycams is also a question of subsidiarity: has the supermarket first considered and investigated the alternatives, or is it immediately resorting to a technological solution simply because it is cheaper? 

The normalisation of surveillance: a lurking risk  

Schuilenburg identifies a broader societal trend. Ten years ago, a security camera was still something out of the ordinary; nowadays, camera surveillance has become so widespread that it has largely lost its deterrent effect. When people no longer give a second thought to the presence of cameras, the disciplinary effect disappears too. The question then is whether bodycams in supermarkets really add a new level of security, or whether they are merely the next step in an ongoing process of normalising surveillance applications.  

This normalisation also has a political dimension. In his broader analysis, Schuilenburg points to the paradox that, on the one hand, people refer to Big Brother scenarios and distrust the government, yet on the other hand, they have no hesitation in purchasing products themselves to monitor themselves and others, from the Apple Watch and Fitbit to the Amazon Ring doorbell. “We are organising our own surveillance,” says Schuilenburg. The bodycam in the supermarket is an intermediary in this: it is not a government camera, but a private camera in a semi-public space. For the customer doing their shopping, it makes little difference whether the camera is owned by a company or by the government; the experience of being filmed is the same. 

A slippery slope for employees?  

In addition to the privacy implications for customers, there is a second concern that Schuilenburg explicitly highlights: the effect of bodycams on the labour market in the security sector. His fear is that, as bodycams become commonplace, supermarkets will start cutting back on the deployment of professional security guards or delegate responsibility for security entirely to cashiers and shelf stackers. If a store employee or team leader can perform the same task with a camera around their neck, there is less incentive to invest in trained security staff. “That’s a slippery slope,” he warns. ‘Slowly but surely, we are shifting the responsibility for tackling theft and violence from the police to trained security staff and then to cheaper shop staff with bodycams.’ This leads to a situation where employees suddenly have to perform tasks for which they are not trained and which are not part of their job description. 

Implications for policy and regulation  

The rise of bodycams in the private sector presents new challenges for legislators and regulators. The current legal framework, based on the GDPR and principles such as proportionality and subsidiarity, provides guidelines but also leaves room for interpretation. Schuilenburg argues that a fundamental policy question must precede every technological choice: “Does this tool actually solve the problem, or are we creating a solution to a problem that we ourselves have created or that we could tackle more effectively by other means? 

This equires a combination of scientific research into the effectiveness of bodycams in various contexts, clarity from the Data Protection Authority on exactly what private parties are and are not permitted to do, and an active dialogue between employers, trade unions and politicians regarding the consequences for the staff required to wear these cameras. In that sense, Albert Heijn’s pilot is not merely a commercial decision, but also a social experiment whose outcomes should be carefully monitored and shared.  

Whatever the outcome may be: the bodycam in the supermarket forces us to reflect on the balance between security and anonymity, between technological optimism and empirical realism, and on the question of who ultimately benefits when the camera is switched on.