Outdoor Lighting and Crime - Amper

7. OUTDOOR LIGHTING STRATEGIES
The evidence already presented seems sufficiently compelling to justify early action to try to
control the growth of crime by stopping or reversing the growth of outdoor lighting. Even if
subsequent research indicates the hypothesis to be in need of modification or wrong, the
evidence would still stand. This, plus the parallel need for reduced lighting on health, safety
and environmental grounds is so strong and the risk of increased crime so small (see Part 1)
that the process should start and continue regardless.
This Chapter explores whether outdoor lighting might be reduced in relatively benign ways.
Note that there is absolutely no call for the outright removal of outdoor artificial lighting, an
emotive misrepresentation already sometimes made by opponents of sky-friendly lighting
reform.
7.1 THE DILEMMA
Modern artificial light at night has certainly brought about a profound and beneficial
transformation of human existence. Productivity and some aspects of quality of life have
improved with the extensions of working hours and recreational activities into the natural dark
hours. But there are negative consequences also. For example, shiftwork is a necessary part
of extended hours of business and extended night life, but shiftwork tends to be surrounded by
quality of life issues including health fears and reduced or fragmented social contact with
families and friends.
Conventional wisdom is that customers entering or leaving daylight-like indoor lighting
conditions when shopping at night should not face steep lighting gradients, so the immediate
off-premises area needs to be brighter than typical outdoor levels at night. In turn, this results
in pressure on city authorities to increase outdoor illumination levels nearby. However,
extended exposure to bright light at night can lead to the sleep and health problems mentioned
in Section 6.1.4. Regardless, extended hours of business, retail and entertainment activity in
cities is the current reality, and extensive bright outdoor lighting is an established part of this
in attracting customers and allaying the fear of crime at night.
Our fuller lives at night now appear to have come at the heavy cost of more crime by day and
night. Can we have our nightlife ‘cake’ without it biting us? Present indications are
pessimistic. The current state of crime prevention and criminal justice is already the result of
centuries of evolutionary development and expenditure of lots of public and private money,
but crime still seems to be gaining. If the new hypothesis is true or even partly true, however,
it does provide a prospect of retarding the growth of crime or even reversing it.
Might we have to take the extreme step of turning all the outdoor lights off and generally
going back to being awake by day and staying home at night? Are worthwhile gains possible
by the less drastic step of reducing outdoor lamp wattages? Is there some way of
compensating for any resulting increase in fear of crime? It will take some ingenuity even to
devise field experiments that avoid apparent disadvantage to some sections of the noncriminal
community.
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