Outdoor Lighting and Crime - Amper

4. MAKING SENSE OF THE EVIDENCE
4.1 ACADEMIC AND PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES
In the preface to Pease (1999), the then President of the Institution of Lighting Engineers
endorsed the review and stated that the (UK) “Home Office now supports the general
consensus [sic] that well designed lighting, which is tailored carefully to the context of a
particular area, has the potential to make a positive impact on crime”. 31 The Foreword, by a
Chief Constable, includes the statements “Dr Kate Painter, and others, have, to some extent,
ploughed a lonely furrow and often met with a wall of, at best apathy and at worst
obstruction, in their valiant efforts in this area”, and “[I am] delighted that it [the report] bears
out what so many people already thought.” The ILE published the review in accordance with
a prior agreement to do so as part of an industry funding arrangement. The separate summary
document (Pease 1998) does not mention this prior agreement, which was apparently an
attempt to overcome possible objections about funding bias. A problem with such agreements
is that they may take precedence over issues of scientific and technical quality.
Two other ILE publications also invite comment. The first of these (Painter 1999) is called ‘a
guide for crime and disorder reduction through a public lighting strategy’. Apart from a title
page style and content that is unusual for a technical document, it has six pages of text dealing
with its author’s own work. The bibliography lists six works, five of which are Painter’s and
the remaining one is Pease (1999).
The other publication is a Technical Report (ILE 1999), a guide for public authorities on the
development of public lighting policy. It includes numerous mentions of lighting as a crime
prevention measure. It encourages growth in the lighting and relighting of public places. It
says nothing about curbing unnecessary and wasteful lighting installations and practices in the
interests of greenhouse gas reduction and compliance with the Kyoto Protocol. Some of its
photographs of outdoor lit scenes and objects appear to be endorsements of environmentally
degrading practices including upwardly directed floodlighting and use of luminaires that send
50% or more of their total light output above the horizontal. It claims that a “large percentage
of Skyglow is caused by light emitted directly upward or at high angles of elevation from
poorly designed luminaires”. In fact, light travelling near the horizontal typically contributes
about three times as much to artificial skyglow as a similar amount of light travelling upward
at high angles. This is because low-elevation paths traverse long distances through lower
31 According to a later British Information Service statement attributed to the Home Office
and its Minister, streetlighting and CCTV work best in cutting crime particularly when used
within a complimentary package of other crime reduction measures. No information was
given about how the effectiveness of individual confounding treatments had been determined
as a basis for this statement. “Street lighting works well if targeted to a specific crime
hotspot…” could be taken as an unwitting official recognition of the regression to the mean
phenomenon. Another statement needs no comment: “This study highlights the ‘gold’
scientific standard for analyzing the impact of CCTV and street lighting, which the Home
Office is applying to current work practice, especially schemes funded under the Crime
Reduction Program” (BIS 2002).
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