Lighting campaigns seek to enhance the ability of people to provide protection for each other. In 1979, the predecessor agency of NIJ, the National Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice, reported on a review of 60 lighting evaluations. The authors of this review concluded: « Is street lighting an effective approach in the reduction and deterrence of crime? The answer is inconclusive. The paucity of reliable and uniform data and the inadequacy of available evaluation studies preclude a definitive statement regarding the relationship between street lighting and crime. » (Tien, et. al. 1979, page 93, emphasis in the original) Almost twenty years later, we know little more about the effectiveness of lighting. In the 1980's, a borough in London upgraded all of its street lighting. Atkins, Husain and Storey (1991) compared reported crimes the year before the relighting to the year following for 39 sections of the borough. No control areas were used, so background trends in crime cannot be assessed. No systematic changes in crime were detected. Surveys of residents of one area found no changes in perceptions of security. A Scottish study of relighting in a Glasgow neighborhood and a small town near Glasgow found that there was a short term reduction in victimizations that varied from 32 percent to 68 percent, depending on how victimization was measured (respondent victimizations, victimization of respondents' children, victimization of other family members, victimization of friends, or car victimization). Reported crime dropped 14 percent. The evaluators compared a three-month period prior to relighting to a three-month period following (Ditton and Nair 1994). No control group was used and the results for the two neighborhoods were combined. Finally, we need to consider three separate evaluations, with similar designs, undertaken by Painter (1994). She examined lighting improvements on two separate street segments and a footpath, all located in « crime prone » areas within London. Pedestrians were interviewed before and after the lighting improvement. All interviews were conducted after dark and were completed within 6 weeks of the relighting. No interviews were conducted in control areas. Substantial reductions in robberies, auto crimes, and threats were reported in two sites (86 percent, 79 percent). These crimes were eliminated in the third site, but the number of crimes before relighting was small so this could have been the result of other factors.
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Percent distribution of burglaries known to police in USA, by place and time of occurrence. ‘Res’ is residence (dwelling) and ‘NonRes’ is store, office etc. For residential burglaries, the time is unknown for between 16% and 19% of all reported burglaries in individual years, and for non-residential, 9% to 11%. Data are from Maguire and Pastore (2002, Table 3.163). Note that the total number of burglaries in the USA has fallen over the years shown.
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Does outdoor nighttime lighting prevent crime? The answer is nobody knows. There have been studies in the United States and in Europe examining this issue, and they have come to no definite conclusions that can be applied to society as a whole. Some studies suggest that lighting a particular neighborhood or park reduces the local crime rate. These types of studies often suffer from poor controls, poor scientific methodology, and failure to include ling term follow-up. Other studies show no significant change in crime rates after the installation of lighting. If it were so easy to reduce crime with lighting, then we should have made considerable headway by now. Our cities have never been brighter, yet the crime rate is higher than ever. The connection between crime reduction and increased lighting is vague at best
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Many people who have not had occasion to investigate the matter tend to assume that where crime is a concern, “the more light, the better”! But the research that has been done to date has provided no reliable evidence that this so. A 1977 U.S. Department of Justice analysis of 60 street lighting projects found that “there is no statistically significant evidence that street lighting impacts the level of crime, especially if crime displacement is taken into account.” An even more comprehensive Justice Department report in 1997 stated, “We may speculate that lighting is effective in some places, ineffective in others, and counter productive in still other circumstances….Lighting has received considerable attention. Yet, evaluation designs are weak and the results are mixed. We can have very little confidence that improved lighting prevents crime….In the absence of better theories about when and where lighting can be effective, and rigorous evaluations of plausible lighting interventions, we cannot make any scientific assertions regarding the effectiveness of lighting. In short, the effectiveness of lighting is unknown.”
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