Litter droppers captured on film

A neighbourhood group in Leicester is so annoyed with people dropping litter that it is filming the offenders and posting the videos on its website.

So far 18 clips have been uploaded and anyone who can recognise the culprits is being asked to contact the group.

St Peters Neighbourhood Monitoring Group then passes the information to the city council.

But an academic has warned people taking the law into their own hands could result in vigilante behaviour.

People dropping litter in public can face a fixed penalty notice or prosecution.

'Named and shamed'

Albert Berer, from the St Peters Neighbourhood Monitoring Group, said: "What we're trying to do is to secure the prosecution of people dropping litter.

"Anyone else going about their normal day-to-day business won't have any videos of them taken.

"We're so cautious about that that quite often we don't use videos where other people walk by."

But James Treadwell, a lecturer in criminology at the University of Leicester, criticised this form of surveillance and said innocent people could be affected.

He said: "What you actually have is a kind of form of citizen policing and the distinction between that and vigilantism can be thin.

"What constitutes dropping litter? Something falls from your purse that you're actually not aware of, you have a leaflet or a rubbish packet in your back pocket, it drops out, that's seen to be littering and you end up filmed and named and shamed."