Outdoor Lighting and Crime - Amper

“We are not aware of any school districts where blacking-out campus coincided with
an increase in vandalism, burglary, or arson. There has not been an increase of such
incidents in our district during the hours of total blackness. It seems logical that a
blackout discourages youth from entering campuses -- they have as much fear of the
unknown as anyone else. In case of burglars, any light shown on a campus is cause
for suspicion on the part of neighbors and police.” (California Energy Extension
Service, no date)
Eight schools in Eugene, Oregon introduced Dark Campus in 1989. Vandalism virtually
disappeared in certain problem schools. Stanley (1993) stated that turning off all lighting
when school is closed saved nearly $14,000 in six buildings of a small Illinois school district
and over $150,000 annually in 19 of 32 buildings in another Illinois district. Vandalism and
loitering were claimed to have decreased. Success has also been claimed for the dark campus
approach in Tampa, FL (Hollingsworth 1995) and Tucson, AZ (Wilson 1998). Marion
County Public Schools (2000) (USA) reported a study of costs of vandalism and the potential
saving in power costs that would follow adoption of a Dark Campus program.
Roller (2001), a maintainer of outdoor lighting fixtures at a US university, claimed that
vandalism increased almost immediately where lights had failed. No data accompanied this
assertion. He also expressed dismay that several previous letters in the same magazine had
suggested that darkness deters crime, and then stated that “Studies have consistently shown
that proper lighting greatly reduces the risk of all sorts of crime”, a claim that is refuted by the
evidence presented in Part 1 and in this document.
Blakemore (2001), reporting on the US ABC News without giving specific details, mentioned
large savings by switching the lights off in office and school buildings. He stated:
“Police report that such darkness is often safer. That’s partly because neighbors
soon learn to alert police if they see any lights on in a building. There’s even less
graffiti because it’s usually lighted walls that attract the spray-can vandals, not dark
ones.”
The last sentence is consistent with experience in Melbourne. The underground rail tunnel is
lit at intervals and is dark in between. Colleagues of the writer have observed that graffiti is
strongly concentrated at the lit parts of the walls. 25
More material on campus lighting and crime is in IDA IS23 (1996), IDA IS27 (1997) and
IDA IS31 (1997). Note that concurrent anti-vandalism actions could confound analysis of the
effectiveness of darkness. At 1997, the success of dark campus programs in combating
vandalism had not been backed by scientific evidence (IDA IS54 1997), but the California
Energy Extension Service (no date) was not aware of any reported increase in vandalism due
to night time blackouts.
The available evidence presented in this section suggests that darkness inhibits property crime
and that the effect in the circumstances applying is primarily direct.
25
The observations are difficult to make during ordinary travel on the trains so the writer can
only report a tentative confirmation.
22