Outdoor Lighting and Crime - Amper

There is immediate scope for data searches and intensive analysis of available data and
information. The lessons of Part 1 about inadequate experimental design need to be kept
firmly in mind before any new trials or quasi-experiments are set up. It would be inexcusable
and counterproductive to repeat the mistakes of the past at this stage. Expert knowledge in
quasi-experimental design and analysis must be seen as an indispensable input into any new
field work on lighting, commerce and crime. Informed input on vision and lighting science
would also appear to be essential, given past photometric shortcomings of the experimental
work.
The combination of the greenhouse gases problem, the skyglow problem and the
environmental health and safety problems of excessive and wasteful outdoor lighting already
constitute an arguable case for capping outdoor lighting and light spill in developed nations at
no more than their present level, as soon as practicable, with orderly reductions in future.
Progress towards global equity in use of natural resources may warrant an early international
moratorium on increases in outdoor lighting across all of the developed countries. The crimereduction
issue strengthens the case for early capping of lighting use and subsequent
progressive lowering of the caps.
7.7.2 Setting and enforcing limits
It is not too soon to devise strategies for longer-term orderly reductions in the global level of
outdoor lighting. Taking into account the right of developing nations to end up with the same
levels of outdoor lighting flux per person as developed nations will have in say twenty years,
the onus is on developed nations to devise strategies for halting and reversing their present
unsustainable expansion in outdoor lighting. It is already well beyond the point where this
issue should have been dealt with decisively through international forums. If, as appears to be
a reasonable possibility, substantial reductions in crime do occur because of lighting
reductions in high quality quasi-experiments, the case for rapid and extensive reductions of
outdoor lighting will be reinforced.
There is no shortage of examples that indicate self-regulation and voluntary standards rarely
work with outdoor lighting. Outdoor lighting is out of control, assisted by virtually
unchallenged advertising and poor quality science that has misled whole industries, whole
nations and even international peak bodies into continuing to think that more and brighter
outdoor lighting would reduce crime.
Any moratorium to deal with the issue would seem unlikely to succeed without legislative
backing, with realistic provisions for enforcement and penalties. One big problem that will
arise quickly is how to include measures to allay the fear of crime. The task appears to be
neither easy nor impossible. One such measure would be universal glare reduction, dealt with
in the following section..
Where outdoor lighting control ordinances already exist in the USA, enforcement often seems
to be an issue (Ploetz 2002). For example, in submissions to Internet discussion groups,
opponents of existing or new ordinances have already referred to the anti-civil-rights aspects
of officials (“light-Nazis”) being sent in to private properties to deal with obtrusive security
lights (“Rottweilers” to some of those affected). Some US police officials have already said
they do not want police to have such a role. However, police in Italy already have this
function in protected areas near observatories (Di Sora 2000).
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