Starting next year, Newark police will be installing 60 new digital video cameras throughout Newark, making it the latest city to rely on the high-tech tools to help combat crime and capture criminals.

The cameras will be sprinkled throughout the downtown business district, primarily in areas where police receive the most number of calls for help, said Matt Klapper, an aide to Mayor Cory Booker, who is working on the project with the police department.

"Everyone thinks it's going to save lives," said Klapper of the administration's stance on putting up the cameras. The project was initiated a few years ago under former Mayor Sharpe James.

Klapper said the administration does not think the cameras will necessarily deter crimes, but instead capture them. Any video footage and evidence, he said, might be useful in court to prosecute defendants. Up to 30 days of footage can be archived, depending on the technology.

Most of the cameras will have the ability to pan an area and will offer full color even at night. Video from the cameras will be streamed into a monitoring center that has already been built, said Klapper.

Police have not yet decided how the footage will be monitored or who will do it, said Peter Lutz, director of the management information services department for Newark police. Lutz said he is recommending that someone watch the video 24 hours a day.

Although they are increasingly common in cities such as Chicago and Washington, D.C., the cameras remain controversial. Critics say the 24-hour surveillance infringes on people's rights to privacy. Others say the cameras only scatter criminals to neighborhoods that do not have cameras.

"The camera is a feel-good emotional solution," said Thomas Ellis, who runs the anti-violence group called Enough is Enough. "It makes people feel good. In reality, people are still getting robbed. The cameras ain't going to make the crime go down."

Ellis said he was once robbed at gunpoint at a store in Newark and that crime was captured on videotape. But when police reviewed the video, he said the images were too grainy and the suspect was never caught.

Robert McCrie, a professor of security management at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said research in England has demonstrated cameras are an effective crime deterrent. McCrie said no comprehensive study has been conducted in the United States.

"I believe it is beneficial for Newark, but the planning needs to be done with forethought so someone doesn't just tack up cameras and say we've got a camera system," said McCrie. "The program has to be right."

McCrie said the technology has gotten so sophisticated that police will be able to capture images on video and then e-mail or text them to cops on street patrol.

McCrie said research in England showed that when cameras were installed, the number of burglaries, car thefts and other crimes decreased by as much as 57 percent because criminals were aware that the cameras were watching.

In Newark, police are looking for as many new strategies as possible to combat crime. The number of murders in the city reached 101 -- a grim milestone that it has not touched since 1995, when there were 102 people killed.

The city installed nine cameras almost three years ago as the first phase of the video surveillance project, said Lutz. Most of those cameras are perched on high buildings, such as the Prudential building on Broad Street. Lutz said he did not know how effective those cameras have been so far.

Klapper said the footage from those cameras had not been monitored in the past. They will remain up even as the new generation is added.

The new cameras will be confined to the city's Urban Enterprise Zone, which covers a large swath of Newark.  About $1.4 million from the Urban Enterprise Zone fund is being used to pay for this project.

Some of the cameras will be made known to the public and others will be concealed, said Lutz. The department also plans to store some of the cameras in bulletproof boxes to protect the equipment.

The city council awarded a contract to Promedia Technology Services Inc. in Clifton to do the work. Lutz said he hopes the first group of cameras are installed by the end of January.