Outdoor Lighting and Crime - Amper

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that allow substantial light spill. 82 The economic and environmental costs of making, installing and operating these floodlights are far from trivial. That the few ultimate beneficiaries probably include criminals adds some Schadenfreude. More follows from some insurance companies insisting on the presence and use of security lighting as a policy condition. Melbourne participates in Victoria’s ‘Pride of Place’ program. At least at night, its most obvious feature is the floodlighting of public buildings, trees, and structures such as bridges, road decorations and high voltage transmission pylons. 83 Generally, the lights are upwardly aimed. Authorities responsible have asserted that a secondary benefit of the lighting is to reduce crime, including vandalism and graffiti. 84 5.7 SEEING SECURITY IN A DIFFERENT WAY The new hypothesis provides some insight into lighting and crime interaction at small scale. Consider a situation where local residents complain about troublesome teenagers congregating under a particular streetlight. 85 Typically, the local authority would respond by putting in a brighter light, which might now be seen as reinforcing the attraction of the site as a miniature lighting hotspot and conducive to more crime. Opposing factors including attention from the police will help the gang to move on in due course, but people will be inclined to believe that the brighter light has banished the gang to darker places. This reinforces what everyone ‘knows’ about light and crime. Doing nothing would eventually lead to the same result by ‘regression to the mean’. It now appears that this result might happen more quickly by dimming or removing the existing light, which would hardly ever be done in present practice. In Australia, it is an offence punishable under the Trade Practices Act 1974 to misrepresent goods or services in trade, and comparable constraints are in place in some other countries. Outdoor light fittings that have ‘security’ in their description and services advertising ‘security’ lighting carry the implication that the goods and services are intended to prevent crime and increase the feeling of safety. There is a need for a mandatory accompanying warning that security lighting goods and services generally do not prevent, deter or reduce crime and may increase it. 82 Virtually every instance of floodlighting tends to disrupt the street lighting designer’s attempts to achieve evenness of illumination, possibly increasing fear of crime and ultimately contributing indirectly to the crime rate. 83 Apparently the floodlight colours were intended to be changed in step with the four seasons but this has not been followed completely. For example, at least some of the power transmission pylons have been uplit only with violet (for winter) since the beginning of the program. 84 Wylie (1999) is a good summary of conventional countermeasures against graffiti. It includes a statement about the supposed benefit of changing a light-coloured dimly-lit wall to brightly lit dark paint! This was dubious advice even when it was written; now it appears to be highly counterproductive. 85 This is described in the quotation at the end of Section 3.3. 95
6. ENVIRONMENTAL ASPECTS 6.1 ADVERSE EFFECTS OF ARTIFICIAL LIGHT AT NIGHT 6.1.1 Lighting and energy Outdoor lighting in the developed and developing parts of the world is already proliferating at an unsustainable rate. Public and street lighting represented about 3% of total electrical energy usage in the Asia-Pacific region in 1998 (UNESCAP 2002). Earlier, Hunter and Crawford (1991) estimated the USA value as 2.5%, but in 2002 it was 4.3% for road and street lighting and 3.1% for parking lot lighting (Navigant Consulting 2002). 86 Fossil-fuelled energy use for outdoor lighting certainly needs to be curtailed to assist overall compliance with the Kyoto Protocol and other greenhouse gas reduction agreements. Decisions about whether or how to do this should not be influenced by erroneous notions of what lighting reductions might do to crime rates. In most parts of the world, public and private outdoor lighting lags well behind world’s best practice in putting the right amount of light where it is needed, with minimal light spill outside this area. Very few governments appear to be well informed about usage and efficacy of outdoor lighting (eg NBI 2002). Far too much unused and waste light illuminates the night sky, needlessly degrades the environment in other ways or is otherwise obtrusive. The proportion of waste was estimated at about 30% (Hunter and Crawford 1991). The Upward Fraction derived in Section 5.2.2 is comparable. Allowing for the differences between the intrinsic energy of visible light and the electrical energy input required for typical outdoor luminaires to emit this much light, a factor of about 15, this appears to be consistent with light energy loss measurements from satellites (Isobe and Hamamura 1998, 2000), viz between 0.1% and 0.2% of all electricity being generated. 87 Producing the readily avoidable part of this waste light wastes about 2% of all electrical energy and unnecessarily produces 2% of the associated greenhouse gas emissions. Extending Hunter and Crawford’s (1991) estimate, the cost of producing all upward waste light in the USA in 2001 would have been about three billion US dollars. Isobe and Hamamura’s estimated cost equivalent for the energy actually radiated as waste light from outdoor light sources in Japan in 1997 was about 200 million US dollars. The energy required to produce this light would have been about 15 times greater, also costing about three billion dollars. 86 All lighting consumed 22% of the total electricity generated in 2001 in the USA. Outdoor stationary lighting used 8% of the total electricity. Of that 8%, roadway lighting used 54% and parking lots, 39%. Residential security lighting used about 1%, and all aviation lighting, 0.8%. All billboards were claimed to use just 0.9%. High-intensity discharge lamps consumed 87% of all of the electricity used outdoors and generated 96% of the lumen hours (Navigant Consulting 2002). 87 Starting from say 0.15% as the observed proportion of total generated electrical energy that appears as waste light energy in the atmosphere, this is about 29% of the energy in outdoor artificial light. The total light energy emitted by outdoor lighting is thus about 0.52% of the total electrical energy generated. For typical outdoor luminaires, about 15 times as much electrical energy is required to make this amount of light energy, ie 7.8% of the total generated electrical energy. This is consistent with the value given for all outdoor lighting in the preceding footnote. 96
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OUTDOOR LIGHTING AND CRIME, PART 2:
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The new hypothesis suggests that pr
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ABBREVIATIONS, CONTRACTIONS AND GLO
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ns not significant NSW New South Wa
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4.2.2.1 A graphical approach.......
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9.12 SKYBEAMS AND LASER DISPLAYS...
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If there is some substance to the b
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2. GROWTH IN LIGHTING AND IN CRIME
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e at risk when community and enviro
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A decade of satellite measurements
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2000). Regardless, there are often
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Intent in two of the source documen
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Unlike the situation in England and
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proportional to the amount of outdo
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Zealand (Not shown in figures) Popu
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the crime is much less feared by mo
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“We are not aware of any school d
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The Auckland central business distr
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Italian regions and in Czechia will
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summer’s worst heat wave and in t
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For 1977-07-04: End of Civil Twilig
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which unreasonably disturbs the sle
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4. MAKING SENSE OF THE EVIDENCE 4.1
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much as 60 % of the emitted light a
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Marchant (2003) pointed out that th
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level will be linked to clock time
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Curve E is the simplest form of var
Page 55 and 56: night, plus the relative change ove
Page 57 and 58: • spatial extent also ranging fro
Page 59 and 60: Crime tends to increase as a reacti
Page 61 and 62: Causal Variable TABLE 2. Apparent S
Page 63 and 64: unreliable, and funding for further
Page 65 and 66: What would be helpful now would be
Page 67 and 68: 5. THE HYPOTHESIS AND FURTHER EVIDE
Page 69 and 70: Isobe 2003) with the same observati
Page 71 and 72: TABLE 3. World Cities: Upward Light
Page 73 and 74: TDU = 0.15 S + 0.5 A + 0.1 V. The t
Page 75 and 76: necessary but not sufficient condit
Page 77 and 78: TABLE 6. Population, Crime and Upwa
Page 79 and 80: On the assumption that roads and pa
Page 81 and 82: eliably positive slope with data un
Page 83 and 84: 5.2.3.7 Summary and discussion of r
Page 85 and 86: eflectance have changed the relativ
Page 87 and 88: Country TABLE 8. Crime Rate and Upw
Page 89 and 90: 5.3 DISCUSSION OF THE CRIME AND LIG
Page 91 and 92: eventually in overall crime rates i
Page 93 and 94: objectionably large reduction, part
Page 95 and 96: no reason to suppose that ambient l
Page 97 and 98: oads were lit adequately for pedest
Page 99 and 100: Because of concern about the upward
Page 101 and 102: that major cross streets occur at i
Page 103 and 104: Overall, the tests indicate that dr
Page 105: TABLE 11. Drugs Crime and Light at
Page 109 and 110: 1999). Year-round summer-length dur
Page 111 and 112: yet ratified under the Kyoto Protoc
Page 113 and 114: One further problem needs to be rai
Page 115 and 116: Even with adequate notice it might
Page 117 and 118: markedly greater if there is substa
Page 119 and 120: at night, not only dim light but lo
Page 121 and 122: A Technical Report on the topic (IL
Page 123 and 124: ambient light. Commercial competiti
Page 125 and 126: with lighting for an aging populati
Page 127 and 128: If excessive lighting and lighting
Page 129 and 130: outdoor use of searchlights, skybea
Page 131 and 132: If funds are available for crime pr
Page 133 and 134: the first place now have to accept
Page 135 and 136: installation and usage of artificia
Page 137 and 138: Section 5.2.2 needs to be replaced
Page 139 and 140: 8.5 ANOTHER VIEW There is an extens
Page 141 and 142: 9. CONCLUSIONS Crime appears to be
Page 143 and 144: There appears to be no compelling e
Page 145 and 146: account for the strong positive cor
Page 147 and 148: aimed lighting used for advertising
Page 149 and 150: 10. RECOMMENDATIONS The following r
Page 151 and 152: c. Support competent investigations
Page 153 and 154: 14. REFERENCES Notes following refe
Page 155 and 156: BJS (2002a) Key crime and justice f
Page 157 and 158:
http://dipastro.pd.astro.it/cinzano
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Dawson, D. and Reid, K. (1997) Fati
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Fennelly, L. J. (1996) Security sur
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Harder, B. (2002) Deprived of darkn
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IDA IS35 (1997) Billboards. Informa
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Klein, A. G., Hall, D. K. and Nolin
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Martinez-Papponi, B. L. (2000) Scie
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NBI (2002) Integrated Energy System
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Pearce, F. (1995) Declaring a curfe
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in the Nurses’ Health Study. Jour
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UNESCAP (2002) Developments in the
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FIGURES FIGURE 1. SKYGLOW AND CRIME
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FIGURE 3. SKYGLOW AND CRIME IN USA
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PERCENT FIGURE 5. USA BURGLARIES BY
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UCR CRIME RATE % FIGURE 7. UCR CRIM
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FIGURE 9. UCR CRIME AND UPWARD LIGH
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FIGURE 11. CRIME RATE AND UPWARD LI
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FIGURE 13. CRIME AND UPWARD LIGHT E
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Log 10 (ILLUMINANCE, lux) FIGURE 15
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