Outdoor Lighting and Crime - Amper

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The lighting decorations and logos often present on the tops of multi-story buildings should not escape any of these limitations. They are often a profligate source of light trespass and energy wastage, and serve little purpose beyond self-aggrandisement of the building owners or tenants. It would appear justifiable to go further and ban them altogether as unnecessary contributors to the crime rate. Illuminated advertising signs and other lit displays in general have a propensity to put half of their available light output more or less uselessly above the horizontal. This effect is not easy to eliminate in any of the three most common types: floodlit opaque billboards, ‘neon’or ‘electric’ signs and internally lit translucent signs. Much more effort needs to go into making the light output directional, aimed at where the sign is supposed to be seen from, while still complying with luminance restrictions such as those suggested above. The outdoor advertising industry must adapt to new knowledge and community priorities. The largest peak shown in Figure 15 is from a giant advertising sign lit by enough high intensity discharge lamps to illuminate a medium size outdoor sports field at national competition level. The actual peak illuminance it produces on the ground is much more than the mean value for both sides of the street shown in the figure, and hundreds of times greater than the illuminance typically produced by streetlights. Spill light directly emitted from the floodlamps and light reflected from the sign itself disrupts the function of street lighting over thousands of square metres in the vicinity. It is a major source of glare. It appears to be a long-term health risk to nearby residents because of potential endocrine disruption. Its existence is testament to the failure of self-regulation and the shortcomings of the planning processes that allowed its installation. Now it can be seen as a likely substantial contributor to to the level of crime in central Melbourne. In due course, calculations may be possible as to the number of extra crimes that it and other signs have helped generate in the area, providing new opportunities for litigation by victims. Large outdoor video screens are like lit signs in terms of being large area sources of bright light. They are effective in attracting crowds. Their effects on illumination at street level at night can be substantial. They need to be subject to appropriate controls if they are to be allowed at all in future. Compliance with the limits in Table 12 could be appropriate. Brightly lit shop window displays and lighting from awnings and verandas can also disrupt uniformity of illumination provided by streetlights. An effective way of dealing with this problem would be to limit the total illuminance in any plane anywhere within say 1 m of the pedestrian pavement to say 120% of that produced by the public lighting alone. This suggested restriction might dismay retailers, but for individuals it would be far better than being assaulted or robbed even once. The commercial world has to ensure that it will not cause any further social damage with its use of lighting and light-emitting displays. It might be thought that moderation should be applied only to obvious lighting hotspots, but endless arguments could thereby result about how such things are defined. Universally applied quantitative restrictions appear to be the only fair way of producing a ‘level playing field’ and the necessary moderation of outdoor 111
ambient light. Commercial competition in future will need to be on some other basis than profligate use of bright light. 96 7.5 LIGHTING CURFEWS Extended business hours in urban centres appear to be a factor in urban crime. The extent to which restrictions of hours might reduce crime is somewhat speculative, but it now seems feasible to make use of new knowledge in extending understanding further by experiment. Because of the fear of crime, it is unlikely that urban centres and suburban shopping strips and malls would retain entertainment and shopping crowds for long after all outdoor lighting dimmed or ceased in accordance with a curfew. This introduction of restrictions on shopping hours might not be necessary. A ‘soft’ curfew such as a multi-stage lighting reduction curfew is likely to have a substantial effect. If the justification is sufficient, lighting curfews could conceivably allow manipulation of variables in large-scale field experiments on urban crime reduction measures. Australian Standard AS 4282-1997 (SA 1997) includes lighting curfews as a standard requirement for certain types and locations of outdoor lighting, with default curfew times such as 10-30 pm or 11-00 pm. However, as already mentioned this standard is not mandatory in Australia unless called up in laws or regulations, and self-regulation has generally not worked. A possible supplement or alternative, which appears to be a growing practice in parts of the USA, is that outdoor illuminated advertising on commercial premises has to be turned off when the doors are not open for business. A similar rule applies to all other outdoor commercial lighting beyond the minimum required for mobility and traffic safety. This sort of after-hours curfew makes a lot of sense in environmental terms (eg Bowyer 1998). It may be less effective for crime reduction if the combination of light flux and operating time is sufficient to have a non-trivial indirect effect in increasing crime. Bérubé (1996) described the surveillance advantages of having minimal outdoor lighting for mobility safety or even no lighting at all for deserted areas surrounding commercial premises, together with sensor-operated security lights to attract attention to intruders. Strobe lights in the same circuit have an even greater attention-getting effect if necessary. 97 Motion-triggered outdoor lighting of moderate brightness might seem to be a good way of having lighting when it is necessary while observing a curfew in normal circumstances. However, CRCIT (2002) deprecated passive infrared (PIR) sensor-switched lights on the following grounds: • Any deterrence comes too late, ie after a burglar has already picked a target. • The light is usually too bright, makes intensely black shadows and may irritate neighbours. • Sudden switching of an intense glare source can be a traffic hazard. 96 Friendly service and value for money might be good alternatives to start with. 97 The development of fully shielded or even full-cutoff strobe lights might now be justified. 112
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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
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night, plus the relative change ove
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• spatial extent also ranging fro
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Crime tends to increase as a reacti
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Causal Variable TABLE 2. Apparent S
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unreliable, and funding for further
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What would be helpful now would be
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5. THE HYPOTHESIS AND FURTHER EVIDE
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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 and 106: TABLE 11. Drugs Crime and Light at
Page 107 and 108: 6. ENVIRONMENTAL ASPECTS 6.1 ADVERS
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: A Technical Report on the topic (IL
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
Page 159 and 160: Dawson, D. and Reid, K. (1997) Fati
Page 161 and 162: Fennelly, L. J. (1996) Security sur
Page 163 and 164: Harder, B. (2002) Deprived of darkn
Page 165 and 166: IDA IS35 (1997) Billboards. Informa
Page 167 and 168: Klein, A. G., Hall, D. K. and Nolin
Page 169 and 170: Martinez-Papponi, B. L. (2000) Scie
Page 171 and 172: 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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