IMO, there's a big difference between expending $24+ million for infrastructure so that development can take place and $20+ thousand for lighting. Not trying to minimize the imprtance of the lighting project, just saying that if I were in the driver's seat and had to set priorities, lighting would probably rank at the bottom. But that's probably because I wouldn't have put together the true costs that are being incurred because of the crime that is occuring.
I'm a newbie here, so please don't shoot the messenger.......but has anyone talked to the Sheriff's Office about the lighting as a crime deterrent? Seems like several cities have been able to put together lighting programs when they've been able to gather documentation to support the need for same. For instance, how many crimes does the Sheriff's Office have recorded that are taking place on that section of Laura Street? What businesses are open during nighttime hours that would be impacted by any crimes? Also, I read somewhere that lighting plays a role in making people feel safer when they are out and about. Has anybody put together that kind of information to support the argument for improved lighting on Laura?
I did find this info on another site that tends to mitigate any argument for increased lighting.....
http://www.asv.org.au/odlighting/node4.html 3.1 RESULTS FROM THE USA
The National Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice of the US Department of Justice presented a thorough study of sixty street lighting projects to the US Congress in February 1977 (Tien, O'Donnell, Barnet, Mirchandani and Pitu 1977 [107], IDA IS63 1998 [51]). The abstract states, in part:
``In particular, while there is no statistically significant evidence that street lighting impacts the level of crime, especially if crime displacement is taken into account, there is a strong indication that increased lighting - perhaps lighting uniformity - decreases the fear of crime.''
Twenty years later, the National Institute of Justice of the US Department of Justice presented an even more comprehensive report (Sherman, Gottfredson, MacKenzie, Eck, Reuter and Bushway 1997 [102]) on crime prevention to the US Congress in February 1997. The following quotes are from `Conclusions for Open Urban Places' in Chapter 7 by Eck (1997) [31]:
``Not much has changed since Tien and his colleagues (1979) [] gave their critical assessment of the impact of lighting on crime.''
``We may speculate that lighting is effective in some places, ineffective in others, and counter productive in still other circumstances.''
``Consider lighting at outside ATM machines, for example. An ATM user might feel safer when the ATM and its immediate surrounding area are well lit. However, this same lighting makes the patron more visible to passing offenders. Who the lighting serves is unclear.''
``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, particularly since we do not know if offenders use lighting to their advantage. 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.''
Eck (2002) [32] has since revised his views:
``The recent lighting studies from Great Britain appear to remove the lingering doubts about lighting's efficacy. Lighting appears to work in public areas, especially residential communities. Generalizing beyond these types of settings is highly speculative, given the rudimentary nature of current lighting theory (Painter and Farrington, 1997 [82]). Lighting may be effective in some places, ineffective in others and counter-productive in still other circumstances. The problematic relationship between lighting and crime increases when one considers that offenders need light to detect potential targets in low-risk situations (Fleming and Burrows, 1986 [38]). As Pease (1999) [90] correctly points out, we should address the specific conditions where lighting is effective, rather than assume it is always effective.''
That lighting is sometimes effective against crime may be a truism. What needs to be resolved is the extent of any net benefit in practice.
Understandably, most people want the incidence of crime to be reduced. It appears to be widely believed by the public that more and brighter outdoor lighting would help. Of course, extending the belief to its ultimate stage means there should be little or no crime in the bright outdoor lighting conditions of daytime, but that is far from the facts. For example, 54 % of violent crime in the USA occurred between 6 am and 6 pm, and only 20 % of rapes involve unknown assailants at night (BJS 1999 [10]). Only 35 % of all burglaries in the USA are reported to have occurred at night, or 48 % of all burglaries for which the time of occurrence is known (UCR 1996 [111]). Note that these figures are for all reported crime in the whole of the USA, which gives them much face validity.4
In more recent details of crime by region in New Jersey (DLPS 2000 [29]), only the burglary data are partitioned into night, day and unknown time. The day rate for burglary is almost as much as the combined rate for night plus unknown time.
Graphs of percentage of violent crime as a function of time of day for years 1991 through 1996 are given in a US Juvenile Justice Bulletin (NCJRS 1999 [74]). Compared with adults, juveniles (under 18) tend to commit a greater proportion of violent crimes in the hours immediately after school gets out on school days. The difference is less pronounced for robberies. The juvenile violent crime rate on non-school days tends to peak in the evening, an hour or so earlier than the peak at about 10 pm to 11 pm for adult violent crime. On all days, the level of juvenile violence is already low during the time of day that juvenile curfew laws are in effect. All of the curves show a minimum at about 5 am to 6 am. Apart from the school-out peak, the crime rate rises more or less steadily during the day and early evening and falls steadily but more steeply after midnight. There is no obvious relationship to the large changes in light level over the 24 hours, other than the location of the peak in hours of natural darkness. Social factors such as the school attendance hours and the preponderance of daytime work and evening leisure time would appear to have a larger influence than light levels.
Rape and domestic violence are more likely to occur after sundown (Cohn 1993 [23]). Cohn noted that although domestic violence tends to be impulsive, rapes are often planned well in advance. Furthermore, social factors and biological photoperiodicities provide alternatives to explanations based on the direct visual effects of light-dark variation. Data from Maguire and Pastore (2002, Table 3.181) [64] indicate that about two thirds of all reported sexual assault and rape cases occur indoors where outdoor conditions could hardly have had much direct influence. Domestic violence also tends to occur indoors where illumination from outside in daytime and from artificial light at night is generally much brighter than it is outdoors at night.
Quinet and Nunn (1998) [95] analysed the number of calls for police service before and after additional streetlights were placed in Indianapolis neighbourhoods. Their results on the deterrent effect of increased lighting were inconclusive at best, but they didn't quite say so. They claimed that disentangling the effects of social disorganisation, police initiatives and behaviour patterns was beyond the scope of work on crime and the physical environment.
Schumacher and Leitner (1999) [98] described spatial crime displacement5 resulting from the most recent wave of urban renewal in Baltimore. (Perhaps, instead, it was an established phenomenon that happened to be observed during the urban renewal.) They expected that increased presence of security personnel, increased street lighting and increased pedestrian traffic would discourage criminal activity in redeveloped areas. ``However, the crime rates throughout the city - and in the downtown, overall - remained at high levels despite the redevelopment. This suggested that the renewal programs did not eliminate, but merely displaced, the criminal activity...'' possibly thereby indirectly harming the neighbourhoods affected by the displacement. They acknowledged the undesirability of such displacements but pointed out that the city's downtown renewal programs have generated a great deal of revenue and improved the city's image.
Loukaitou-Sideris, Liggett, Iseki and Thurlow (2001) [63] studied the effect of the built environment on crime at 60 bus stops in downtown Los Angeles. Although there were substantial differences between stops in crime incidence, no relationship was found between crime and the paucity of pedestrian lighting at the stop. This seemed to surprise the authors, who wrote ``...we can by no means conclude that lighting is not important. For one, we did not account for lighting from near-by establishments. Also, the presence of a pedestrian light did not always mean that this light was lit at night.'' Sherman et al. (1997) [102] is not even listed in the references. The same applies to Sherman and Weisburd (1995) [101], who stated ``Bus stops, pay telephones, and intensive lighting were common features of hot spots''. Numerous other publications about this LA bus stop work were found in an Internet search. Several of these mention lighting as a crime prevention method or, apparently without justification, claim less crime at stops equipped with shelters and adequate lighting (eg Benson 2000 [9]).
Summing up, relatively short-term studies in the USA appear to indicate that there is no clear overall effect of the amount of outdoor light or lighting either in increasing or decreasing actual crime rates . This confirms earlier assessments (eg IDA IS51 1992 [50], IDA IS63 1998 [51]). Farrington and Welsh (2002a,b) [34,35] concluded that there was a relatively small beneficial effect. Their work is discussed in Chapter 5 below.
But there appears to be a wealth of information out there about cities that have put lighting programs in place as part of their development/redevelopment ordinances, and specifically to be used as crime deterrents.
