Outdoor Lighting and Crime - Amper

Overall, the tests indicate that drugs crime arrests tend not to occur in places that are relatively
dim at night, contrary to popular belief about crimes being associated with ‘poor’ lighting. Of
course, all of the arrests may have taken place in daytime, but this seems unlikely given the
observed high density of crowds and known drug dealing in parts of these streets in the
evening. Even if the arrests were mostly or all in the daytime, the hypothesis still provides a
reason for the otherwise inexplicable: why relatively dim lighting at night at a particular place
could reduce crime by day at that place. Furthermore, the scale of ‘place’ in this context is
rather small, maybe only one or a few hundred square metres.
If the results merely represent some direct effect of dim light in hindering drugs crime,
explanations for this might be that criminals fear the dark like anyone else and tend to avoid it
even when committing crime, and that where there is any choice possible, perhaps the police
also avoid the dark in carrying out their duties. But these explanations appear to require so
many of the arrests to have been at night that no daytime arrest occurred by chance in any of
the places that are dimly lit at night.
Figures 15 and 16 also help to provide an indication against population or population density
as an important causative factor in the drugs crime rate, whether supplemental to or in place
of lighting. By casual inspection, the resident population density along the streets is
reasonably well defined. The streets examined have relatively few apartments, hotels and
backpackers’ accommodation. These are mostly well separated by office buildings, retail
stores and shops. At this scale, no consistent connection was apparent between positions of
these facilities and either the lighting or crime distributions in the figures.
Overall, this investigation is claimed to provide strong support for the notion of positive
coupling of the growth of outdoor ambient light at night and 24-hour crime in general, and for
the lighting, commerce and crime hypothesis in particular. 81
In September 2002, a proposed as-yet unfunded AUD$15M upgrade was announced for the
pedestrian mall part of Bourke Street in Melbourne, encompassing street numbers 270 to 357.
This includes three existing drugs crime arrest locations. The City of Melbourne website
showed how lighting is to be increased, with several special effects including projected
images and many fully shielded lights suspended from wires. If it eventuates as currently
proposed, the unwitting result could well be to make Melbourne the crime capital of
Australia. Furthermore, it was not stated how adding so many new lights and illuminated or
self-luminous displays could be justified given the resultant increases in the City’s already
excessive greenhouse gas emissions.
81 The shortcomings of the data are acknowledged, but at present, Figure 16 especially is like
the one-eyed man who was king in the land of the blind.
92