outdoor lighting and crime, part 1 - Astronomical Society of Victoria

“The design and layout of the estates, and the type of dwellings, facilitated
natural surveillance, which was particularly important for street lighting to be
effective as a crime prevention strategy.”
These features doubtless also facilitated criminal choice of target and commission of
crime, but this is not mentioned.
“The new lighting replaced the older type mercury lamps.”
The implication is that new is better than old, when there was no good reason to believe
that the characteristics of the replacement lamps were any better or worse than those
of the existing type of lamps in terms of any beneficial effect on crime, and they were certainly
worse from the viewpoint of experimental design. (See below in this section for more
details.)
“The British Standard (BS5489 Part 3) lists three categories of lighting levels
corresponding to low, medium and high crime risk areas and levels of traffic and
pedestrian usage.”
This statement pre-empts the experiment, as greater risk of actual crime is stated in the
standard as requiring brighter lighting. This is a fault of the standard rather than the paper,
but the statement is not queried in the paper. It also raises the issue of why the standard
expressed this view when the balance of available evidence was inconclusive if not against
it at the time it was written. 13
“Also, it permits the displacement of crime from the experimental area to the
control area.”
This pre-empts the experiment by failing to mention the opposite effect as an equal
possibility.
“In addition to leading to a positive change in resident opinions and physically
creating a brighter and safer environment, street lighting...”
The inclusion of ‘safer’ pre-empts the experiment.
The following statement is made in the conclusions section of Painter and Farrington
(1997):
“In short, improved street lighting has no negative effects and has demonstrated
benefits for law abiding citizens.”
At the time, there was an extensive and readily available literature to the contrary about
the adverse health, safety, ecological, greenhouse and other environmental effects of artificial
light at night (eg IDA 2002 [49], LiteLynx 2002 [61]). Nobody should recommend
increasing what is already an environmental problem without seeking expert advice and discussing
or at least drawing attention to the broader ramifications.
13 Australian Standards on road and public lighting issued in 1997 and 1999 also imply that lighting prevents
crime but give inadequate justification for this.
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