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Improved street lighting and crime prevention
Abstract
This article reports on a systematic review—incorporating meta-analytic techniques—of the effects of improved street lighting on crime. Studies were included if they had before-and-after measures of crime in experimental and control areas. Eight American evaluation studies met the criteria for inclusion, and their results were mixed. Four studies found that improved street lighting was effective in reducing crime, while the other four found that it was not effective. However, five more-recent British evaluation studies showed that improved lighting led to decreases in crime. In two studies, the financial savings from reduced crimes greatly exceeded the financial costs of the improved street lighting. A meta-analysis found that the 13 studies, taken together, showed that improved lighting led to reductions in crime. The overall reduction in crime after improved lighting was 20% in experimental areas compared with control areas. Since nighttime crimes did not decrease more than daytime crimes, a theory focusing on the role of street lighting in increasing community pride seems more plausible than a theory focusing on increased surveillance. Future research should be designed to test the main theories of the effects of improved lighting more explicitly and should measure crime using police records, surveys of victims, and self-reports of offending.
... Although the international literature shows much evidence for the effect of CPTED features on safety, the evidence is mixed; for a review, see Cozens, Saville, and Hillier (2005), Cozens and Love (2015) and Farrington and Welsh (2002). Building on these previous reviews of the literature, this chapter aims to contribute to the evidence in this area by collecting and systematizing scholarly knowledge on the effect of urban design on urban safety-in particular, the impact of features such as lighting and CCTV on crime and/or perceived safety. ...
... In a rural context in the Global South, the study by Arvate, Falsete, Ribeiro, and Souza (2018) showed that better lighting is associated with a decrease in homicides. Farrington and Welsh (2002) reported a systematic review incorporating meta-analytic techniques of the effects of improved street lighting on crime to indicate that good lighting has a positive effect on crime reduction. More intriguing was the study by Stolzenberg, D'Alessio, and Flexon (2017) who investigated the effect of moon illumination on reported crime occurring outdoors between the hours of 10 pm and 2 am in 13 US states, as well as the District of Columbia. ...
... Farrington & Welsh, (2002) Overall crime (-) -Qual./Quant. Overall crime (/) ...
The aim of this chapter is to discuss the evidence in the international literature of the effects of urban design features on safety. More specifically, this research examines the relationship between features such as lighting and CCTV to the occurrence of crime and/or individuals’ safety perceptions. Potential unexpected side effects of these features on a city’s overall quality are also discussed. To achieve these goals, the literature from 1968 to 2018 was searched using as references the Scopus, Web of Science, and JSTOR databases. A bibliometric visualization software (VOSviewer) was used to manage and map the vast material, spanning more than five decades of research, on crime and fear of crime. This pre-selection of topics was thought to be relevant for further investigation in an in-depth analysis of the 106 articles. The chapter identifies gaps in the literature and suggestions for a research agenda and practice.
... v List of Tables improving lighting to a street may reduce the number of opportunities for offending as any offense will be brightly lit to anyone looking towards the street, increasing the risk that offenders are detected. While CPTED is a broad and diverse field that spans from physically obstructing crime opportunities to conferring ownership of spaces to "legitimate users" of these spaces (Cozens and Love 2015, 396), this dissertation focuses on two of the most frequently used tools to prevent crime: door locks (Dijk, Kesteren, and Smit 2007;National Statistics 2019;Budd 1999) and outdoor lights (Welsh and Farrington 2008;Chalfin et al. 2019). ...
... Artificial lighting, generally through streetlights, has transformed nighttime activities in cities and has been found to improve public safety (Schivelbusch 1987;Welsh and Farrington 2008;Chalfin et al. 2019). Importantly, lights are a practical solution that both public (government) and private actorssuch as businesses and homeowners -can take to reduce their risk of crime. ...
... Studies on lighting, however, often face methodological issues, leading to relatively few rigorous studies on lighting and crime (Welsh and Farrington 2008). One such issue is that increased lighting through streetlights is not merely increased illumination in an area absent of all other elements. ...
Changing the physical design of an area has been long understood to be an effective way to change people's behavior. Within the field of criminology, Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) is an approach that alters the physical environment to decrease opportunities for crime. This dissertation examines two common tools used to reduce opportunities for crime: door locks and outdoor lighting. Though these tools are ubiquitously used, there are limitations in the current research on what effect these tools have on crime. This dissertation uses three papers to extend the CPTED literature by filling in some of these gaps in knowledge. The first paper assesses the effect of installing smart locks on the exterior doors of campus buildings on a major urban university campus. Results show that there is no significant change in the number of crimes per month on buildings that install these locks relative to a comparison group. The second paper measures how the number of outdoor, nighttime crimes change as the amount of moonlight - a relatively dim source of light - changes. Results show that nights with more moonlight have more crime, a finding in contrast to much of the literature on lighting. This suggests that the effects of lighting are non-linear - that a small increase of lighting may increase crime while significant increases in lighting decrease crime. The final paper evaluates one possible mechanism for the bulk of the lighting literature's finding that lighting decreases crime: that more light increases the risk of detection. This study uses the change in evening lighting when the United States transitions to (from) daylight saving time in spring (fall) which causes the evening the gain (lose) an hour of daylight. Results show that when evenings are brighter, the odds of an arrest for violent crimes - and for robbery in particular - significantly increase. Together, these studies advance the field of criminology by providing evidence on the effectiveness of two widely utilized crime control tools - door locks and outdoor lighting - to affect criminal behavior. This contribution can assist both researchers in the CPTED field as well as policy makers who must decide whether - and in which situations - to use door locks or outdoor lighting as crime control measures.
... In order to better understand the role that the physical environment can play in generating deterrence and, ultimately, crime reduction, we study one of the most ubiquitousand understudied-environmental design changes that cities have relied on to maintain public safety for more than two hundred years: street lighting. By enhancing visibility, lighting has the potential to change crime through many channels, including by empowering potential victims to better protect themselves and by making potential offenders more aware that a public space has witnesses or that police are present (Farrington and Welsh 2002;Painter and Farrington 1999b). While the available quasi-experimental literature suggests that street lighting may be an effective crime control strategy, methodological limitations have limited the formation of a scholarly consensus (Marchant 2004). ...
... These theories emphasize the importance of investments to improve neighborhood conditions as a means of strengthening community confidence, cohesion and informal social control (Skogan 1990). One particular hypothesis, advanced by Farrington and Welsh (2002), references a seminal article in Science by Sampson et al. (1997) which argues that neighborhood crime is a function of a community's underlying level of collective efficacy. In theory, an improvement in a community's physical environment can potentially serve as a cue that an area is cared for and thus is an inappropriate setting for behaviors that violate community norms (Taylor and Gottfredson 1986). ...
... While the intervention we study is temporary, according to this theory, it might affect crime by changing community perceptions more broadly. As has been suggested by Farrington and Welsh (2002) and Welsh and Farrington (2008), to the extent that lighting operates by changing community cohesion, it might have an impact not only on nighttime crimes but also on crimes committed during daytime hours when lights are not technically operational (Welsh and Farrington 2008). We discuss empirical evidence on this point in section "Main Estimates". ...
Objectives
This paper offers novel experimental evidence that violent crimes can be successfully reduced by changing the situational environment that potential victims and offenders face. We focus on a ubiquitous but understudied feature of the urban landscape—street lighting—and report the first experimental evidence on the effect of street lighting on crime.
Methods
Through a unique public partnership in New York City, temporary street lights were randomly allocated to 40 of the city’s public housing developments.
Results
We find evidence that communities that were assigned more lighting experienced sizable reductions in nighttime outdoor index crimes. We also observe a large decline in arrests indicating that deterrence is the most likely mechanism through which the intervention reduced crime.
Conclusion
Results suggests that street lighting, when deployed tactically, may be a means through which policymakers can control crime without widening the net of the criminal justice system.
... Therefore, the need for a surveillance process has been one of their major concerns always. With the advent of time, people have achieved their skills in science and technology and like all other aspects of life, managed the use of technology in the surveillance also [1]. In the context of a present completely complex society, it is very difficult for law enforcement agencies to maintain their surveillance on a whole community other than having a technological advantage. ...
... Some sorts of policy determination or strategic formulation for addressing different crimes in different zones are thus possible in this way. There are some problems in using CCTV footage as evidence in many cases but these are good sources to investigate the actual incidents and reconstruct the crime scene to direct it for the legal procedure [1]. ...
... The situational crime prevention approach recommends that environmental design such as street lighting directly influences the offender's perceived risk of being recognized [1]. CCTV also can work as key equipment for such environmental designing. ...
This research intends to investigate the impact of CCTV surveillance on crime prevention in Bangladesh. Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh was selected as the research area in this regard. Four police stations from a total of forty-nine police stations located in different parts of Dhaka city were selected purposively for the study. Interviewing to the general people and a semi-structured interviewing to the police personnel in the jurisdiction of selected police stations were used for data collection. The data for the present paper were collected in the period of February to June 2018 from the study area. This study reveals that the police authority selects their locations for the installation of CCTV as per their own priority determination. Most of the respondents of the current study consider that CCTV has a moderate impact on reducing crime. They also consider that it can reduce the fear of crime among the commoners and provide them a sense of safeness. The opinion survey also reveals that CCTV may displace the crimes from one place to another and thus may make one place safer and another place vulnerable at the same time. Different crimes are influenced differently due to the installation of CCTV. However, CCTV has a great role in the detection and prevention of crime, although it needs to address some privacy issues. Proper installation and maintenance of CCTV are still at the initial stage in Bangladesh. It is recommended that the existing installation and maintenance of the system should be replaced with a properly audited demand for CCTV operations. Additionally, a wireless networking mechanism incorporating advanced options like facial recognition and artificial intelligence needs to develop.
... Therefore, the need for a surveillance process has been one of their major concerns always. With the advent of time, people have achieved their skills in science and technology and like all other aspects of life, managed the use of technology in the surveillance also [1]. In the context of a present completely complex society, it is very difficult for law enforcement agencies to maintain their surveillance on a whole community other than having a technological advantage. ...
... Some sorts of policy determination or strategic formulation for addressing different crimes in different zones are thus possible in this way. There are some problems in using CCTV footage as evidence in many cases but these are good sources to investigate the actual incidents and reconstruct the crime scene to direct it for the legal procedure [1]. ...
... The situational crime prevention approach recommends that environmental design such as street lighting directly influences the offender's perceived risk of being recognized [1]. CCTV also can work as key equipment for such environmental designing. ...
This research intends to investigate the impact of CCTV surveillance on crime prevention in Bangladesh. Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh was selected as the research area in this regard. Four police stations from a total of forty-nine police stations located in different parts of Dhaka city were selected purposively for the study. Interviewing to the general people and a semi-structured interviewing to the police personnel in the jurisdiction of selected police stations were used for data collection. The data for the present paper were collected in the period of February to June 2018 from the study area. This study reveals that the police authority selects their locations for the installation of CCTV as per their own priority determination. Most of the respondents of the current study consider that CCTV has a moderate impact on reducing crime. They also consider that it can reduce the fear of crime among the commoners and provide them a sense of safeness. The opinion survey also reveals that CCTV may displace the crimes from one place to another and thus may make one place safer and another place vulnerable at the same time. Different crimes are influenced differently due to the installation of CCTV. However, CCTV has a great role in the detection and prevention of crime, although it needs to address some privacy issues. Proper installation and maintenance of CCTV are still at the initial stage in Bangladesh. It is recommended that the existing installation and maintenance of the system should be replaced with a properly audited demand for CCTV operations. Additionally, a wireless networking mechanism incorporating advanced options like facial recognition and artificial intelligence needs to develop.
... Examples are CCTV surveillance cameras, security lights and alarm systems, body-worn cameras, license plate readers, car immobilisers and ignition interlocks and electronic tagging, just to name a few. Most studies on the effectiveness of these types of technologies are tested in urban contexts (Welsh & Farrington, 2008a;Welsh & Farrington, 2008b;Marklund & Holmberg, 2009;Farrell, Tseloni & Tilley, 2011;Ariel, Farrar & Sutherland, 2015;Tseloni, Thompson, Grove, Tilley & Farrell, 2017). Shariati and Guerette (2017) observed a consensus in the literature that situational approaches effectively prevent crime on the individual and community level, and through environmental designs of the built environment. ...
... In rural areas, some farmers also resort to medieval CPTED methods such as through the use of earth banks and ditches along field boundaries to prevent trespassing and poaching activities (NFU Mutual, 2018). In urban settings, traditional CPTED measures are commonly assisted with modern technologies by installing, for example, light sensors, alarm systems and CCTV (Welsh & Farrington, 2008a;Welsh & Farrington, 2008b). Although still modest, this trend is expanding to rural communities, especially for farm security (Barclay et al., 2001;Anderson & McCall, 2005;Smith & Byrne, 2017). ...
... Sharati and Guerette (2017) argue that such unclear consensus may be due to the untailored feature of technologies to types and places of crime, unlike conventional SCP measures. Welsh and Farrington (2008b) found that improved street lighting significantly reduced crimes in the United States and the United Kingdom. Apart from crime deterrence, better lighting also improved the overall community pride, social control and quality of life, especially in stable homogenous communities. ...
This chapter presents a literature review on the use of technologies as Situational Crime Prevention initiatives in rural areas, based on a review of reports published after the year 2000, focusing on studies that present evidence for technologies’ impact on crime (property and wildlife crimes) in rural contexts. A focus will also be on security cameras (henceforth CCTV), alarms, security lights, sensors and drones. Throughout this study, these will be referred to as modern technologies, whilst the use of locks, fences, gates and so on, and marking of properties and rearing of protective animals such as dogs and geese, as traditional measures of SCP. Accordingly, opportunities and challenges associated with the use of modern technologies in rural contexts are identified. This enables the spotlighting of areas of pressing research and allows for consideration of policy implications.
... Like disorder reduction, street lights are widely thought to be an effective tool in reducing crime and therefore have become a ubiquitous type of investment in environmental design (Farrington and Welsh 2002;Welsh and Farrington 2008). Research in criminology, public health and urban planning suggests that improvements in lighting are welcomed by residents and tend to reduce fear of crime and improve perceptions of community safety (Atkins et al. 1991;Herbert and Davidson 1994;Painter 1994Painter , 1996. ...
... thirteen studies which do employ a comparison area, these areas are often chosen in an ad hoc manner and the validity of resulting estimates depends on a common trends assumption that is formally untestable and is infrequently subject to empirical verification. To the extent that municipal officials make strategic decisions about where to locate newly available street lights, even pre-post designs with a comparison group may yield biased estimates of the effect of street lights on crime (Farrington and Welsh 2002;Doleac and Sanders 2015;Domínguez and Asahi 2017). As a result, despite a plethora of suggestive positive findings, over the last two decades the promise of street lighting to control crime has been a topic of considerable debate with scholars such as Marchant (2004) suggesting that past research may be unreliable, a conclusion that was echoed in a 1997 National Institute of Justice report to the U.S. Congress, written after much of the extant literature was completed, which concludes that "we can have very little confidence that improved lighting prevents crime." ...
... A related implication of these findings is that they may help to resolve an apparent paradox in the literature. On the one hand, adding additional lighting to a community tends to improve public safety (Farrington and Welsh 2002;Welsh and Farrington 2008;Doleac and Sanders 2015;Chalfin et al. 2020). On the other hand, prior research has noted that crime hot spots tend to be associated with more ambient lighting, not less (Sherman and Weisburd 1995;Weisburd et al. 2012Weisburd et al. , 2014. ...
Objectives
For more than one hundred years, street lighting has been one of the most ubiquitous capital investments in public safety. Prior research on street lighting is largely limited to ecological studies of very small geographic areas, creating substantial challenges with respect to both causal identification and statistical power. We address limitations of the prior literature by studying a natural experiment created by short-term disruptions to municipal street lighting.
Methods
We leverage a natural experiment created by the differential timing of the repair of nearly 300,000 street light outages in Chicago. By conditioning on street segment fixed effects and focusing on a short window of time around the repair of a street light outage, we can credibly rule out confounding factors due to area-specific time trends as well as street segment-level correlates of crime.
Results
We find that outdoor nighttime crimes change very little on street segments affected by street light outages, but that outages cause crime to spill over to nearby street segments. Effects are largest for robberies and motor vehicle theft.
Conclusions
Despite strong environmental and social characteristics that tend to tie crime to place, we observe that street light outages are sufficiently salient to disrupt longstanding patterns. While the impact of localized street light outages can reverberate throughout a community, the findings imply that improvements in lighting can be defeated by the displacement of crime to adjacent spaces and therefore do not necessarily suggest that localized investments in municipal street lighting will yield a large public safety dividend.
... The first systematic review of the effects of street lighting on crime, covering research reported up to December 2000, identified a total of 13 studies (eight from the United States and five from the United Kingdom) that met the inclusion criteria (Farrington & Welsh, 2002a, 2002b. Improved street lighting was the focus in each of the studies. ...
... For example, in the present review, we found that desirable effects of street lighting interventions were greater in studies that measured both night and day crimes than in studies that only measured night crimes. Drawing from our prior reviews on the subject, this finding suggests that a theory of street lighting focusing on its role in increasing community pride and informal social control may be more plausible than a theory focusing on increased surveillance or deterrence (see e.g., Farrington & Welsh, 2002b). Crucial to this explanation, however, is the ability to exclude an alternative hypothesis, specifically, that increased community pride comes first, which leads to street lighting interventions and associated reductions in crime. ...
This article reports on an updated systematic review and meta‐analysis of the effects of street lighting interventions on crime in public places. Following Campbell Collaboration guidelines, it uses robust criteria for inclusion of studies, comprehensive search strategies to identify eligible studies, a detailed protocol for coding key study characteristics, and rigorous methods for analyzing studies. A total of 21 studies met the inclusion criteria, originating in four countries (United States, United Kingdom, Brazil, and South Korea) and covering almost 50 years (1974–2021). The review finds that street lighting interventions are associated with a significant desirable effect on total crime (14% reduction in treatment areas compared with comparable control areas); desirable effects are greater in studies that measured both night and day crimes than in studies that only measured night crimes; and street lighting is followed by a significant reduction in property crimes, but not in violent crimes. Compared to past years, it would seem that an even stronger case can be made today for street lighting interventions to be part of crime‐prevention policy. A larger body of high‐quality evaluation research, implemented in a range of high‐crime public places, some evidence of value for money, and a continued desirable impact on crime, especially property crime, all point to the policy relevance of street lighting interventions.
... This journal would benefit from enhancing the clarity of the writing structure (Marczyk et al., 2005). Farrington and Welsh (2002) conducted a sizable systematic review on lighting as crime prevention in the UK and USA. The research identified that street lighting could reduce crime by up to 21% (Painter, 1996;Pease, 1999). ...
... Cozens and Sun (2019) related the gendered difference in their study to Deviant Place Theory (Stark, 1987), as many female students were more fearful of areas that were perceived as dangerous. This supports Farrington and Welsh's (2002) study that stated more street lighting makes people feel safer in public due to increased natural surveillance. Participant 7 also noted that they felt scared because of groups of men who are there, noting that 'It's dark and full of groups of men'. ...
The purpose of this study was to investigate if crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED) in Leicester affects DMU student's perception of safety. This study aimed to contribute to eliminating the gap of knowledge in the field. The currently available literature has limited information surrounding CPTED and the perception of safety for university students. The research was also chosen to aid De Montfort University and Leicester in addressing any safety concerns mentioned in the study. This study systematically analysed data collected from an online survey that was conducted. An online mixed-method survey approach was taken and distributed via DMU Facebook group platforms. The survey was then thematically analysed. The data highlighted that students have a multitude of safety concerns that often overlap each other, including, but not limited to: lack of lighting, limited surveillance, large amounts of homelessness, antisocial behaviour and the lack of proactive policing/security. The findings of this study demonstrate that there is a link between CPTED and the perception of safety for DMU students. Recommendations for improvements will be made for Leicester and De Montfort University to action at their discretion.
... In addition, a welllit area decreases the feeling of anonymity in people, mitigating stimulus for deviant behavior [31]. However, a study indicates that the role of lighting in crime prevention more likely works via community pride and informal social control than through surveillance and deterrence [100]. In any case, empirical evidence reinforces the positive contribution of lighting to reduce crimes according to observation in different places [100][101][102]. ...
... However, a study indicates that the role of lighting in crime prevention more likely works via community pride and informal social control than through surveillance and deterrence [100]. In any case, empirical evidence reinforces the positive contribution of lighting to reduce crimes according to observation in different places [100][101][102]. ...
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aim at providing a healthier planet for present and future generations. At the most recent SDG summit held in 2019, Member States recognized that the achievements accomplished to date have been insufficient to achieve this mission. This paper presents a comprehensive literature review of 227 documents contextualizing outdoor lighting with SDGs, showing its potential to resolve some existing issues related to the SDG targets. From a list of 17 goals, six SDGs were identified to have relevant synergies with outdoor lighting in smart cities, including SDG 3 (Good health and well-being), SDG 11 (Sustainable cities and communities), SDG 14 (Life below water) and SDG 15 (Life on land). This review also links efficient lighting roles partially with SDG 7 (Affordable and clean energy) and SDG 13 (Climate action) through Target 7.3 and Target 13.2, respectively. This paper identifies outdoor lighting as a vector directly impacting 16 of the 50 targets in the six SDGs involved. Each section in this review discusses the main aspects of outdoor lighting by a human-centric, energy efficiency and environmental impacts. Each aspect addresses the most recent studies contributing to lighting solutions in the literature, helping us to understand the positive and negative impacts of artificial lighting on living beings. In addition, the work summarizes the proposed solutions and results tackling specific topics impacting SDG demands.
... Thus from an environmental perspective, where the crime occurs is an important element for understanding why it occurred and what can be done to prevent it. Many urban interventions that aim to prevent and reduce violence focus on situational prevention approaches, which incorporate design measures in order to reduce crime opportunities (Farrington and Welsh 2002). Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) aims to reduce situational opportunities for violence through infrastructure improvements (Willman and Corman 2013, p. 19), and there is evidence that situational prevention measures can reduce certain types of crimes. ...
... Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) aims to reduce situational opportunities for violence through infrastructure improvements (Willman and Corman 2013, p. 19), and there is evidence that situational prevention measures can reduce certain types of crimes. Some examples include improvements in street lighting associated with reduced property and vehicle theft, buildings with windows foster a sense of safety and ground-floor windows have been found to promote pedestrian activity (Oreskovic et al. 2014;Farrington and Welsh 2002). A number of studies on sexual offending against women have indicated that adopting a situational approach will reduce opportunities for crimes to be committed in public places (c.f. ...
The lack of accessible crime data, especially geolocations, in developing countries often acts as a barrier to identifying environmental or situational factors in high crime areas that might contribute to the facilitation of those crimes. This paper presents a methodology for conducting fieldwork for creating heat maps to identify areas prone to violence against women (VAW) in Corregidora, Mexico. Heat maps were produced based on household survey data. The results were used to select specific high concentration locations to conduct structured observations and inductive visual analysis at street level in order to identify if and what situational factors might influence the perpetration of VAW in those locations. Four broad features were identified in the urban built environment during the site visits linked to the facilitation of opportunities for the commission of VAW: (1) lacking infrastructure, (2) presence of physical obstacles , (3) poor visibility and (4) restricted pedestrian mobility. The paper demonstrates the utility of this method for aiding situational crime prevention strategies in areas where official spatial crime data is unavailable or lacking. This study presents a relatively low cost (although labour intensive) and independent method of aiding crime prevention strategies, which will hopefully be of practical value for organisations in areas with poor crime recording practices and limited access to expensive mapping technologies.
... Numerous researchers (Painter and Farrington 1999;Cozens et al. 2003;Welsh and Farrington 2008;Davies and Farrington 2018) have delineated the theoretical explanations for why lighting should influence crime, and Farrington and Welsh (2002) provide a systematic review of the various theories that support the idea that improved lighting may reduce crime (Cozens et al. 2003). Two primary theoretical explanations, the situational approach to crime and informal social control, both hold as a key assumption the premise that 'criminal opportunities and risks are influenced by environmental conditions in interaction with resident and offender characteristics' (Farrington and Welsh 2002, p. 3). ...
... An emphasis on lighting as a highly visible sign of neighborhood investment signals to residents that efforts are being made to improve the neighborhood (Wilson and Kelling 1982;Skogan 1990;Painter and Farrington 1999). Thus, Welsh and Farrington (2008) argue that informal social control theoretically explains why improved lighting should result in a reduction in crime during both the day and night. ...
This research uses both situational approaches to crime and informal social controls lenses to assess the effect of improved lighting in two micro-places. A pre/post-comparison design incorporating the 12 months prior to lighting installation and the 12 months after, coupled with a buffer zone, was utilized to assess the direct effect on crimes and calls for service as well as potential displacements or diffusion of benefits. While there are some modest effects, overall, the results do not support the hypotheses. The most robust analyses possible given the pre/post-nature of the data and the lack of a control area were undertaken but limitations exist. Future efforts should seek to measure crime in numerous ways and account for the levels of illumination provided before and after the intervention both in control and experimental areas.
... Crime prevention is also expected to address the scope and situational nature of the problem to be changed and the context in which problems are occurring (Blair et al. 2017;Cozens and Love 2015). Increased lighting may be associated with increased risk for offenders who are easier to see in well-lit places, but it may also increase natural surveillance of the area which in turn makes individuals feel safe and more likely to occupy the space (Farrington and Welsh 2002;Painter and Farrington 1997). Surveillance cameras are viewed as decreasing perceptions of privacy and trust in schools (Taylor 2010), but supported and associated with perceptions of increased safety in parks, despite not reducing crime or disorder (Surette and Stephenson 2019). ...
... The difficulties in establishing natural surveillance as a causal mechanism for crime prevention in part stems from natural surveillance potentially simultaneously influencing crime and crime reporting behaviors. Research on lighting and crime sometimes finds this, that increased lighting may have increased reporting of offenses, not increased actual offenses (Farrington and Welsh 2002;Painter and Farrington 1997). Somewhat similar, when more police are hired and crime appears to increase, it is possible that the same amount of crime has occurred, but now officers are better able to respond to reports (Carriaga and Worrall 2015). ...
This study provides an evaluation of a park amenity, a fenced dog enclosure, on crime in its vicinity. This study also includes geographic variability and assesses the intervention’s impact at multiple distances from the intervention. This study uses an interrupted time series analysis focused on a before-and-after comparison. Monthly incidents of police calls-for-service (CFS) from 2010 to 2016 are analyzed (n = 84). We analyze two series: (1) within 50 feet of the intervention site; and (2) within 700 feet of the intervention. After the installation of the dog park, CFS within 50 feet of the intervention increased (b = 0.776, p < 0.05). However, the expanded geographic coverage of 700 feet shows that the intervention has no statistically significant effect on the series (b = 5.25, p > 0.05). This work found that the dog park intervention increased CFS immediately around the park, and that decisions regarding level of geographic aggregation can change the conclusions of an evaluation.
... Street lights are widely thought to be an effective tool in reducing crime and have therefore become a ubiquitous type of investment in environmental design (Painter and Farrington 1999b;Farrington and Welsh 2002;Welsh and Farrington 2008) and a key part of many crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED) efforts (Robinson 2013). The available evidence on street lighting suggests that its impact on public safety is promising, reducing crime by, on average, 20% (Welsh and Farrington 2008) and perhaps by as much as 40% if lighting is deployed in order to maximize its salience to community residents (Chalfin et al. 2020). ...
... The virtue of survey experiments is that they allow researchers to generate "gold standard" social science evidence at low cost, credibly allowing researchers to generate causal inferences which would have been difficult to defend based on observational research. This feature of survey experiments is especially welcome when an intervention of interest is difficult to randomize or provide in sufficient numbers to study using a rigorous research design, both of which have been noted as critical limitations to studying the effect of lighting on crime (Farrington and Welsh 2002;Davies and Farrington 2018;Chalfin et al. 2020). Likewise, survey experiments are particularly useful when key outcomes are attitudinal or are poorly measured using administrative data. ...
Observational evidence suggests that better ambient lighting leads people to feel safer when spending time outdoors in their community. We subject this finding to greater scrutiny and elaborate on the extent to which improvements in street lighting affect routine activities during nighttime hours. We report evidence from a survey experiment that examines individuals’ perceptions of safety under two different intensities of nighttime ambient lighting. Brighter street lighting leads individuals to feel safer and over half of survey respondents are willing to pay an additional $400 per year in taxes in order to finance a hypothetical program which would replace dim yellow street lights with brighter LED lights. However, poor lighting does not change people’s willingness to spend time outdoors or to engage in behaviors which mitigate risk. Results suggest that street lighting is a means through which policymakers can both control crime and improve community well-being.
... In this context, also pedestrians and vulnerable road users suffer from decreased visibility in the dark [1]. The studies in [2,3] suggest that street lighting deployment may prevent road accidents and fatalities and significantly reduce crime. In this sense, another study [4] suggests that, when risk for citizens are considered carefully, techniques for power consumption reduction in street lighting (i.e. ...
... Moreover, the Crime Prevention through Environmental Design (CPTED) approach suggests that design principles in the built environment can be used to deter crime, such as pedestrian walkways, lighting outside buildings, and landscaping that allows for visibility (Carter et al., 2003;Thani et al., 2016). Studies of multicomponent CPTED interventions have found decreases in calls for police service, burglary, and violent crimes, though the effect on drug and violent crimes is less-well established (Carter et al., 2003;Cozens et al., 2005;Welsh and Farrington, 2008). ...
This study examined the effect of neighborhood investments on neighborhood walkability, presence of incivilities, and crime in two low-income, primarily African American neighborhoods in Pittsburgh, USA. During the study period, one of the neighborhoods (the intervention neighborhood) received substantially more publicly-funded investments than a demographically matched comparison neighborhood. Comparisons between the neighborhoods showed a significant difference-in-difference for all three outcomes. The intervention neighborhood experienced significantly more change related to improved walkability and decreased incivilities. However, the control neighborhood experienced better crime-related outcomes. Analyses that focused on resident proximity to investments found similar results. This highlights the nuances of neighborhood investment, which is important to consider when thinking about public policy.
... Ensuring the buy-in and involvement of the station's personnel was deemed as central to the success of implementing these strategies, and was achieved through constant communication and quality supervision. The yearly action plan noted nine interventions, including three that have been identified in the literature as effective for reducing property crime: street lighting (Welsh & Farrington, 2008a), CCTV (Eck & Guerette, 2012;Piza, 2018;Welsh & Farrington, 2008b, and neighborhood watch (Bennett, Holloway, & Farrington, 2008). ...
Research Summary
In 1979 Herman Goldstein proposed a radical reform—problem‐oriented policing (POP)—which has had tremendous impact on scholars and practitioners. Even though his paper and subsequent work led to a large body of literature on how to carry out problem‐oriented policing tactics, scholars have often ignored the question of how POP can be institutionalized in police agencies. In this article, we evaluate a reform in Israel—EMUN— that attempted to institutionalize problem‐oriented policing on a national scale. Focusing on property crime, we compare three treatment stations (with high, moderate, and low crime) with control stations chosen through a systematic matching procedure. We find that there are large and significant reductions in the targeted areas (termed “polygons”) for high‐ and moderate‐property‐ crime stations as compared with the control stations. We also do not find evidence of displacement but instead evidence of significant diffusions of crime control benefits. Importantly, property crime declines occurred in these stations overall. Significant benefits were not found for the low‐crime treatment station. We attribute this to the low base rate of crimes and low resource allocation in this station.
Policy Implications
These findings suggest that the EMUN reform provides a potential model for institutionalizing problem‐oriented policing as an organizational reform. EMUN attempted to support and reinforce each of the main steps of the problem‐oriented policing model. It also developed sophisticated computer tools to aid in this process that not only supported problem‐solving efforts but also allowed for wide‐scale supervision of each stage of the POP model.
... Based on the analysis of the literature, two hypotheses can be put forward that explain the assumed crime prevention effect of street lighting. The first hypothesis asserts that street lighting provides visibility, which could deter potential offenders by increasing the possibility of crimes being detected and offenders identified (Atkins et al., 1991;Tien et al., 1977;Welsh & Farrington, 2008a;Wright et al., 1974). According to situational crime prevention theories and the first generation of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED), it is possible to prevent crime by manipulating the urban context to influence the behavior and decision-making processes of offenders. ...
... Environmental criminologists suggest that physical design can influence crime rates by reducing or expanding opportunities (Tabangin, Flores, & Emperador, 2008). Especially relevant to tourism, street and parking design can influence crime with areas of higher permeability, areas near major roads, and rear parking lots contribute to increases in crime (Cozens, 2008;Johnson & Bowers, 2010), while good street lighting and good visibility are crime deterrents (Seo & Lee, 2017;Welsh & Farrington, 2008). ...
Designing places that yield high quality of life (QOL) for residents is a foundation of planning and community development. A focus on sustainability is increasingly important in design thinking and implementation. At a community level, the consideration of sustainable planning and management can create policies and investments targeted at improved community outcomes. Sustainability management is viewed as a solution to many of the negative impacts that mass tourism can bring. A discussion on a new framing around place value incorporates design features of a community as a way of enhancing QOL. A destination example is featured to show the praxis of theory to practice for efforts to use sustainability to shape positive QOL. The article finishes with a discussion of the role that sustainability management can play in strengthening design and QOL.
... 15. Further, as positive externalities, some scholars find that an increase in street lighting results in crime reduction and prevention (e.g. Farrington and Welsh 2002; see also the recent randomized experiment in New York City by Chalfin, Hansen, Lerner, and Parker 2019), and this benefits only those who live close to improved streetlights. ...
How are resources distributed when administrative units merge? We take advantage of recent, large-scale municipal mergers in Japan to systematically study the impact of municipal mergers within merged municipalities and, in particular, what politicians do when their districts and constituencies suddenly change. We argue that when rural and sparsely populated municipalities merge with more urban and densely populated municipalities, residents of the former are likely to see a reduced share of public spending because they lost political leverage through the merger. Our empirical analyses detect changes in public spending before and after the municipal mergers with remote sensing data, which allows for flexible units of analysis and enables us to proxy for spending within merged municipalities. Overall, our results show that politicians tend to reduce benefits allocated to areas where there are a small number of voters, while increasing the allocation to more populous areas. The micro-foundation of our argument is also corroborated by survey data. The finding suggests that, all things being equal, the quantity rather than quality of electorates matters for politicians immediately after political units change.
... can affect safety while driving.Perkins et al (2015) reported that the effects of the introduction of street lighting on road traffic injury found some evidence for improved road safety with increased street lighting [rate ratio (RR) 0.78, 95% CI 0.63 to 0.97].Welsh and Farrington (2008) also reported that the effects of increasing street lighting on crime found a reduction in crime for those studies that examined changes over the course of the entire day (i.e. during hours of both daylight and darkness). ...
The importance of urban streetlight infrastructure to the growth and development of any economy cannot be undermined judging from numerous advantages accruing from it. However, the studies on streetlight distribution pattern are rare in the literature. The present study, therefore, examined the spatial analysis of urban street lights infrastructure in Port Harcourt Metropolis, Rivers State, Nigeria. The study made use of 120 copies of the questionnaire, administered on people living and doing business in Port Harcourt and Obio/Akpor Local Government Areas of Rivers State, Nigeria, along the three major selected roads (Ikwerre Road, Port Harcourt-Aba Road and Rumuola Road). Also, GPS was used to capture the locations of the streetlight along these major roads which were used to produce the distribution pattern of the streetlight. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used for the data analysis. For instance, the Nearest Neighbour Analysis was used to depict the significant distribution pattern of the functional streetlights and non-functional streetlights. Findings showed that 40 streets in the metropolis have functional streetlights while 19 streets have non-functional streetlights. Further evidence from the study reveals that the causes of streetlight vandalization are non-maintenance of streetlight infrastructure, absence of security, absence of power, unemployment, reckless driving, violence, youth restiveness and theft. The study recommended that streetlight should be constantly powered using gas turbine and solar because of the abundance of gas reserve and sunlight in the country. It also recommends that streetlight and its infrastructure should be monitored with adequate technologies to protect it against vandals. Furthermore, adequate funding should be provided for training of personnel to man the GIS equipment and for maintaining streetlight infrastructure.
... There has been a growing body of research examining how physical environment variables impact crime such as climate change (4,5), vacant lots or buildings (6), ambient and artificial light (7,8), or visual disorder (9). Another factor that has been much less studied is the impact of urban greenspace (10), though the mechanisms for this effect are unknown. ...
Crime is costly economically, socially, and psychologically for all societies, especially in urban areas. While there are many well-studied environmental and social influences on crime such as poverty and marginalization, one less studied, but important factor is the effect of neighborhood greenspace. Prior research has shown that greenspace is negatively associated with crime, but the mechanism of this effect is debated. One suggested mechanism is that greenspaces increase local street activity, which in turn reduces crime, but past work has failed to examine effects of greenspace and street activity together, making it difficult to decouple these factors. Additionally, past research has typically used the static physical presence of greenspace as opposed to determining residents’ engagement with and use of greenspace, which may be critical to understanding the potential causal role of greenspace on crime. Here, we examine the association of crime with street activity, physical greenspace presence, and active engagement with greenspace as measured by park visits, in Chicago and New York City, USA. Using novel cell phone mobility data, we quantified street activity and park visits by census tracts. In both cities, we found that park visits and street activity significantly and negatively predicted both violent and non-violent crime after controlling for many socio-demographic factors. Each factor explained unique variance in the model, suggesting multiple pathways for the effects of street activity and greenspace on crime.
... Finding ways to mitigate the ecological impacts of ALAN is an interdisciplinary challenge. Outdoor lighting carries numerous societal benefits, such as preventing traffic collisions (Wanvik, 2009;Yannis et al., 2013), reducing crime (Welsh & Farrington, 2008) and increasing perceived public safety, particularly for marginalised groups (Trench et al., 1992;Painter, 1996). Conversely, concerns about the impacts of light pollution on astronomy (Riegel, 1973) and human health (Cho et al., 2015) mean that reducing light pollution has the potential to deliver a win-win for both biodiversity and people. ...
1. The night-time environment is increasingly being lit, often by broad-spectrum lighting, and there is growing evidence that artificial light at night (ALAN) has consequences for ecosystems, potentially contributing to declines in insect populations.
2. Moths are species-rich, sensitive to ALAN, and have undergone declines in Europe, making them the ideal group for investigating the impacts of light pollution on nocturnal insects more broadly. Here, we take a life cycle approach to review the impacts of ALAN on moths, drawing on a range of disciplines including ecology, physiology, and applied entomology.
3. We find evidence of diverse impacts across most life stages and key behaviours. Many studies have examined flight-to-light behaviour in adults and our meta-analysis found that mercury vapour, metal halide, and compact fluorescent bulbs induce this more than LED and sodium lamps. However, we found that ALAN can also disrupt reproduction, larval development, and pupal diapause, with likely negative impacts on individual fitness, and that moths can be indirectly affected via hostplants and predators. These findings indicate that ALAN could also affect day-flying insects through impacts on earlier life stages.
4. Overall, we found strong evidence for effects of artificial light on moth behaviour and physiology, but little rigorous, direct evidence that this scales up to impacts on populations. Crucially, there is a need to determine the potential contribution of ALAN to insect declines, relative to other drivers of change. In the meantime, we recommend precautionary strategies to mitigate possible negative effects of ALAN on insect populations.
... Previous meta-analyses of place-based interventions (e.g. Farrington and Welsh 2002; that have analyzed data of a similar type have estimated mean effect sizes and associated confidence intervals for each study using odds ratios calculations (see Lipsey and Wilson, 2001: pp. 52-54).Hence, we use the odds ratio to measure effect sizes here. ...
Overall, teachers' multi‐component classroom management programmes have a significant positive effect in decreasing aggressive or problematic behaviour in the classroom. Students in the treatment classrooms in all 12 studies reviewed showed less disruptive or problematic behaviours when compared to the students in control classrooms without the intervention. It is not possible to make any conclusions regarding what components of the management programmes are most effective due to small sample size and lack of information reported in the studies reviewed.
STRUCTURED ABSTRACT
Background
One of the most common criticisms of spatially focused policing efforts (such as Problem‐Oriented Policing, police ‘crackdowns’ or hotspots policing) is that crime will simply relocate to other times and places since the “root causes” of crime were not addressed. This phenomenon—called crime displacement—has important implications for many policing projects. By far, spatial displacement (movement of crime from a treatment area to an area nearby) is the form most commonly recognized. At the extreme, widespread displacement stands to undermine the effects of geographically focused policing actions. More often, however, research suggests that crime displacement is rarely total. On the other end of the displacement continuum is the phenomenon of ‘diffusion of crime control benefits’ (a term coined by Ron Clarke and David Weisburd in 1994). Diffusion occurs when reductions of crime (or other improvements) are achieved in areas that are close to crime prevention interventions, even though those areas were not actually targeted by the intervention itself.
Objectives
To synthesize the evidence concerning the degree to which geographically focused policing initiatives are related to spatial displacement of crime or diffusion of the crime control benefits.
Search Strategy
A number of search strategies were used to retrieve relevant studies. First, we undertook a keyword search of electronic abstract databases. Second, we searched bibliographies of existing displacement reviews and reviews of the effectiveness of focused policing initiatives. Third, we did forward searches for works that had cited key displacement publications. Fourth, we reviewed research reports of professional research and policing organizations. Fifth, we undertook a hand search of pertinent journals and publications. Finally, once these searches were all completed we emailed a list of the studies that we had assessed as meeting (and a separate list of those not meeting) our criteria to a number of key scholars with knowledge of the area to identify any further studies we might have missed.
Selection Criteria
Eligible studies met the following criteria; (1) they evaluated a policing initiative; (2) this initiative was geographically focused to a local area; (3) the evaluation included a quantitative measure of crime for both a ‘treatment’ area and a displacement/diffusion ‘catchment’ area. This needed to be available for both a pre‐ and a post‐ (or during‐) intervention period. Other criteria specified that the study was written in English and that it reported original research findings. The studies could have been conducted at any point in time and at any location. Both published and unpublished studies were included.
Data Collection and Analysis
For all of our 44 eligible studies, we produced a narrative review and a summary of the author's findings, concerning the effectiveness of the policing initiative and any displacement or diffusion observed. For the 16 studies for which we were able to gain pre and post measures of crime for each of a minimum of three area types (a treatment, control and catchment area) we produced odds ratio effect sizes which were used in a meta‐analysis. For the meta‐analysis we reported the mean effect size for both the treatment areas and the catchment areas. This summarized the effectiveness of the policing interventions and the displacement/diffusion effect respectively. Because a number of studies had more than one primary outcome, we reported the largest effect and the smallest effect in each case. We also performed permutation tests using combinations in which one primary outcome was chosen from each study. Other tests assessed the effects of study design, intervention type, size of intervention and publication bias. A further quantitative analysis of these 16 studies summarised the mean Weighted Displacement Quotient (WDQ) a measure developed in earlier work by two of the study authors. Finally, a proportional change analysis looked at increases and decreases in crime in treatment and catchment areas for the 36 studies for which count data were available. This analysis did not require data to be available for a control area.
Main Results
The main findings of the meta‐analysis suggested that on average geographically focused policing initiatives for which data were available were (1) associated with significant reductions in crime and disorder and that (2) overall, changes in catchment areas were non‐significant but there was a trend in favour of a diffusion of benefit.
For the weighted displacement quotient analyses, the weight of the evidence suggests that where changes are observed in catchment areas that exceed those that might be expected in the absence of intervention, a diffusion of crime control benefit rather than displacement appears to be the more likely outcome.
The results of the proportional change analysis suggest that the majority of eligible studies experienced a decrease in crime in the treatment area indicating possible success of the scheme. The majority also experience a decrease in the catchment areas suggesting the possibility of a diffusion of benefit. These findings, which could not be statistically tested, are consistent with all others reported here, and with those from the narrative review.
Conclusions
In summary the message from this review is a positive one to those involved in the sort of operational policing initiatives considered, the main point being that displacement is far from inevitable as a result of such endeavor, and, in fact that the opposite, a diffusion of crime control benefits appears to be the more likely consequence.
... While the use of stated preference surveys to estimate intangible costs is increasing in the crime literature, they are not without detractors. While some commentators object to the use of intangible costs regardless of how they are estimated (e.g., Tonry 2015), this view is not widely held by either economists who study crime (see, e.g., Levitt 1996;Ludwig and Cook 2001;Evans and Owens 2007) or by leading criminologists who use these estimates in analyzing crime control polices (see, e.g., Farrington and Welsh 2002;Nagin et al. 2006;Weisburd et al. 2017). Without rehashing the philosophical differences between those who criticize versus those who utilize this literature (see Cohen 2016 for a discussion on both methodological and philosophical issues related to estimating crime costs), we focus instead on methodological issues associated with using stated preference surveys here while acknowledging our own belief that including intangible benefits is appropriate for public policy analyses. ...
Objectives
The objectives of the study were (a) to utilize a state-of-the-art survey methodology previously employed in the environmental, health, and safety economics literatures to estimate the cost of violent crime and homicide in Buenos Aires and (b) to demonstrate the feasibility of this method for crime cost estimation and for using these surveys in developing countries.
Methods
The study used a random sample of households from an online panel in Buenos Aires. Respondents were asked to choose among three options with factorial design varying homicide rate, violent crime rate, policy measures to reduce crime, and tax impact (with one option being status quo). Discrete choice modeling was utilized to estimate willingness-to-pay for reduction in risk of homicide and violent crime as well as independent values for two policy options.
Results
The cost of homicide in Buenos Aires is estimated to be approximately $1.5 million, whereas the cost of other violent crimes (including rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) is estimated to average $2000. In addition to extending intangible crime cost estimates to Latin America, we simultaneously estimate the value of two comprehensive crime control policies, with values ranging from $600 to $700 million/year, about $12 per household per month each.
Conclusion
Discrete choice experiments can be credibly adopted to estimate the cost of crime. We implement this method in a Latin American country, where the estimated costs in Buenos Ares are consistent with those found in developing countries once controlling for income differences. These subjective crime cost valuations are significantly higher than tangible crime costs and, thus, provide a significant improvement in the ability of policy makers to conduct social benefit–cost analysis.
... Aaron Chalfin https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4810-5146 Notes 1. Indeed, the empirical regularity that crime is highly spatially concentrated has been central to the study of criminal justice policy and has promulgated a number of important research literatures that have become a mainstay of empirical criminology including a large literature on hot spots policing (Braga 2001;Braga and Bond 2008;Braga, Papachristos, and Hureau 2014;Sherman and Weisburd 1995;Weisburd and Green 1995;Weisburd and Telep 2014) and the equally important literature on the importance of environmental design including research on restoring vacant lots (Bogar and Beyer 2016;Branas et al. 2011Branas et al. , 2018Garvin, Cannuscio, and Branas 2013;Kondo et al. 2016;Moyer et al. 2019;South et al. 2018), reducing physical disorder (Braga, Welsh, and Schnell 2015;Keizer, Lindenberg, and Steg 2008;Kelling and Wilson 1982;Skogan 2012) and improving ambient lighting (Chalfin et al. 2019, Chalfin, Kaplan, andLaForest 2020;Doleac and Sanders 2015;Farrington and Welsh 2002;Welsh and Farrington 2008). 2. In Weisburd's own words, "for a defined measure of crime at a specific microgeographic unit, the concentration of crime will fall within a narrow bandwidth of percentages." ...
Objectives
In his 2014 Sutherland address to the American Society of Criminology, David Weisburd demonstrated that the share of crime that is accounted for by the most crime-ridden street segments is notably high and strikingly similar across cities, an empirical regularity referred to as the “law of crime concentration.” In the large literature that has since proliferated, there remains considerable debate as to how crime concentration should be measured empirically. We suggest a measure of crime concentration that is simple, accurate and easily interpreted.
Methods
Using data from three of the largest cities in the United States, we compare observed crime concentration to a counterfactual distribution of crimes generated by randomizing crimes to street segments. We show that this method avoids a key pitfall that causes a popular method of measuring crime concentration to considerably overstate the degree of crime concentration in a city.
Results
While crime is significantly concentrated in a statistical sense and while some crimes are substantively concentrated among hot spots, the precise relationship is considerably weaker than has been documented in the empirical literature.
Conclusions
The method we propose is simple and easily interpretable and compliments recent advances which use the Gini coefficient to measure crime concentration.
... While adequate lighting has crime deterrent properties (see, e.g. Farrington and Welsh (2002) for a meta-analytic review), participants placed greater value on the presence of people, failing to recognize this condition as necessary for robbery to occur. For this reason, we advise care when communicating the risk of crime to the public. ...
The movement towards micro-place level assessments has contributed to the growing popularity of place-based police strategies. Complementing this movement, risk terrain modeling (RTM) is a methodological approach that identifies a micro-place’s vulnerability to crime by considering the combined spatial influences of physical features of the landscape linked to criminal behavior, along with past crime exposure. Given the growing popularity of this tool, studies that explore how RTM contributes to prior knowledge on crime risk are of great value. Our study is the first to expand upon previous applications of RTM by integrating the insights from the risk and decisions sciences to consider the perspective of potential crime victims. This type of evaluation can shed light on factors related to victimization and inform police strategies. To this end, our study utilizes a mixed-method approach to examine whether participants’ perceptions of risk determined from visual inspections of micro-places correspond to statistical (or objective) risk produced from a risk terrain model of robbery in downtown Detroit, Michigan. Participants were randomly assigned to receive a low, medium, or high risk micro-place, and asked to respond to a series of questions that measured their risk perceptions. Overall, participants’ perceptions of their risk of being robbed were the inverse of that predicted by our risk terrain model. Our qualitative analysis suggests that this disconnect can be largely explained by the presence of people and lighting. In a follow-up study, we alter the levels of people and lighting at low and high risk micro-places. We found that high levels of people an lighting play a dominant role in informing risk perceptions, superseding all other considerations. We discuss the implications of our findings for crime prevention, as well as our study’s limitations and directions for future research.
... Therefore, a public open space must be able to provide comfort for its visitors by creating a compact, walkable, and diverse area [9]. Providing a safe atmosphere is also needed such as by providing a good visual view at all times, especially at night by providing good street lights [10]. Those qualities is formulated to produce the quality assessment variables, The variables founded are: 1. Accessibility ; 2. Visual appearance ; 3. Inclusive ; 4. Accommodating abilities ; 5. Safety ; 6. Comfort. ...
... In a modern city with a good networking infrastructure, security cameras are a scalable technology. Therefore, it is possible to keep a watchful eye on many places of interest and indeed studies have shown that the technology can contribute to crime prevention (Welsh and Farrington, 2008). • Computational social science is a field of study where the power of computers and networks is used to study social sciences. ...
We describe the contribution of computer science to Crime Science
Using a comprehensive victimization survey data set, we develop the first test of routine activity (RA) theory in a Latin American country. Estimating a complementary log-log multilevel model of the theory in several stages, we investigate what factors in the theory predict residential burglary risk. We find that measures associated with the exposure to potential offenders, target attractiveness , target accessibility, personal guardianship, social guardianship, and natural guardianship predict residential burglary in our sample of Mexican cities. As such, residential burglary is a complex crime with multiple factors at play, for which RA theory is a suitable theory given the concise-ness of its propositions and operational definitions. We foresee RA theory successfully influencing future studies of crime in the Latin American region.
Objectives
Researchers have been studying the most important environmental cues that influence people’s fear and how to measure these emotions and perceptions in a more valid way. In order to contribute to experimental studies, we develop and validate the Urban Security Image Database (USID).Method
The construction and validation of the USID followed two stages: (a) the obtainment by researchers of more than 300 naturalistic pictures in different urban contexts of the city of Porto and (b) using a within-subject design, a large sample (N = 1780) classified 49 selected pictures for fear of crime, risk perception of victimization, arousal, and valence levels.ResultsThe validated Urban Security Image Database (USID) contains 49 pictures that are grouped in three categories according to fear mean levels: low fear, neutral fear, and high fear. Pictures of the low fear group depict residential areas, with high prospect spaces and well-cared vegetation. Pictures in the high fear group represent scenarios in night-time, with signs of incivilities and low prospect spaces. Fear of crime was negatively correlated with valence and positively with arousal.ConclusionsUSID is an important step to laboratorial experiments in the field of fear of crime and its relationship with environmental features. Moreover, since fear of crime is correlated with valence and arousal, it provides strength to the importance of considering fear a context-specific experience.
I februari år 2019 erhöll Avdelningen för Samhällsplanering och Miljö på KTH i uppdrag av Boverket att kartlägga aktuell teori och praktik för brottsförebyggande och trygghetsskapande fysiska åtgärder i Sverige. Målet med studien var att inhämta och sammanställa kunskap om hur trygghetsskapande och brottsförebyggande perspektiv ser ut idag och vilka åtgärder som vidtas i utformningen av fysiska miljöer i de olika skedena av samhällsbyggnadsprocessen. Rapporten är en kartläggning av aktuell nationell och internationell teori och praktik för brottsförebyggande och trygghetsskapande fysiska åtgärder.
Syftet med den här rapporten är att ge en översikt på hur säkerhet och trygghet konceptualiseras och omsätts i praktiken i Sverige. Vi ger även tips på hur man går från ord till handling när man arbetar med situationsbaserade, brottspreventiva och trygghetsfrämjande åtgärder med fokus på individ och hänsyn till plats- och tidsdynamik. Vi gör detta genom att visa exempel på:
o Visioner och pågående projekt som implementeras i verkligheten mot bakgrund av FN:s Agenda 2030 för hållbar utveckling.
o Praktiska situationsbaserade brottspreventiva och trygghetsfrämjande åtgärder
o Innovativa metoder med stort fokus på evidensbaserade åtgärder.
o Hur planerare och trygghetsamordnare arbetar i kommuner och vikten av kontext i deras arbete mot brott och otrygghet.
o Hur man går från ord till handling när man jobbar med ett situationsbaserat fokus på situationsbaserade brottspreventiva och trygghetsfrämjande åtgärder.
Denna rapport som finansieras av FORMAS (Ett forskningsråd för hållbar utveckling) är en fortsättning på den tidigare rapporten, Trygg Stadsmiljö - Teori och praktik för brottsförebyggande & trygghetsskapande åtgärder (2019) av Ceccato och kollegor, och har ett större fokus på fallstudier och exempel på säkerhets- och trygghetsskapande arbete i praktiken. Den första rapporten var ett resultat av ett uppdrag som Avdelningen för Samhällsplanering och Miljö på KTH erhöll i februari år 2019 av Boverket för att kartlägga aktuell teori och praktik för brottsförebyggande och trygghetsskapande fysiska åtgärder i Sverige i ett internationellt perspektiv.
In many countries, there is a movement away from ‘car-centred’ policies and a stronger interest in developing healthy, equitable, and sustainable transport systems that enhance liveability. However, the translation of these new priorities into convincing ‘economic cases’ for funding agencies requires changes in appraisal methods. This paper reviews the state of the art in the appraisal of nine impacts of transport related to liveability: trip quality, time use in transport, place quality, time use in places, personal security, visual blight, community severance, equity/social inclusion, and health/wellbeing. We look at whether and how these impacts are currently appraised in practice and propose alternative methods based on a review of the literature and our suggestions. We found that there are robust methods to measure and monetise some of the impacts, but those methods tend to be integrated in national guidelines and are not always suitable at the city or regional level. Research on stated and revealed preferences methods has moved fast but application faces issues of complexity, transferability, and double counting. It is still difficult to monetise impacts such as time use in transport and visual blight without further methodological developments.
In times when security is the topmost priority of every community, the provision of adequate and functional streetlights is deemed necessary as one of the measures to protect life and property. In this study, the researchers designed and constructed a prototype device Automatic Streetlight Controller with anti-theft alarm using a Light-dependent resistor (LDR) and Photodiode – Infrared LED tandem. This study was conducted to assess the qualitative description, functionality, and level of acceptability regarding the constructed Automatic Streetlight Controller with Anti-theft device in terms of its performance as to device and simulator/trainer, the convenience of use, safety, assembly of parts, and cost. A mixed research design was used that includes both qualitative and quantitative research design. The qualitative description of the device was presented in narrative form and assessed using a focused-group discussion. Quantitative research design is done using quasi-experimental in testing the functionality, trials were made to assess its functionality and descriptive survey method was used to assess the level of acceptability. Probability sampling was also used thru the lottery method to get the two (2) selected groups of respondents: the 3rd year BSIT- Electricity block B students and community barangay officials of Calunasan, Calape, Bohol. T-test was used to test its significance using the 0.05α. Results have shown that on testing the device has 100% good performance and is rated as it functions well. The acceptability level was rated “very high” which means highly acceptable by both respondents. Therefore, the device can be used if implanted in existing street lights or newly built ones to improve the condition of our street lights to properly illuminate the streets for an improved security system.
Há evidências de que ambientes urbanos que desestimulam a caminhada contribuem para a incapacidade funcional de idosos. Vários índices foram propostos para descrever a caminhabilidade de uma área combinando aspectos do ambiente construído que promovem ou inibem a caminhada. No entanto, devido a problemas de qualidade e disponibilidade de dados no Brasil, até o momento não há um índice de caminhabilidade aplicável a todas as cidades do país e devidamente testado na população. O objetivo deste estudo foi propor um índice de caminhabilidade baseado em sistemas de informação geográfica para uma cidade de médio porte, com dados de livre acesso, bem como testar sua associação com a incapacidade funcional em idosos. Foram usados os dados da área urbana de um município de médio porte para selecionar um conjunto parcimonioso de variáveis por meio de análise fatorial. O índice obtido foi testado em relação à sua associação com a capacidade para a realização de atividades de vida diária que requerem maior movimentação, em 499 idosos utilizando equações de estimativas generalizadas. O índice de caminhabilidade resultante foi composto por densidade residencial, densidade comercial, conectividade de ruas, presença de calçadas e iluminação pública. Essas variáveis compuseram o primeiro fator da análise fatorial, excluindo-se apenas a arborização que ficou retida no segundo fator. Verificou-se que o pior escore de caminhabilidade estava associado ao maior escore de incapacidade funcional. Com base nos resultados e na validação deles, o estudo sugere um índice de caminhabilidade facilmente aplicável com grande potencial de uso em planos de ação para adequar os ambientes.
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Abstract:
Bei der Bestimmung des Einflusses von Beleuchtung auf Kriminalität bedarf es der Unterscheidung von Kriminalitätsaufkommen und Kriminalitätsangst. Während sich ein indirekter Einfluss von Beleuchtung auf das Zustandekommen von Straftaten annehmen lässt, konnte ein direkter Einfluss empirisch bisher nicht einwandfrei belegt werden. Denn neben der Beleuchtung können verschiedene weitere Faktoren wie beispielsweise die An- oder Abwesenheit
von Zeugen das Kriminalitätsaufkommen beeinflussen. Im Gegensatz dazu haben verschiedene Studien den positiven Einfluss von Beleuchtung auf die Senkung von Kriminalitätsangst nicht nur generell belegen, sondern auch quantifizieren können. In der Nacht erzeugen Straßenbeleuchtungs- installationen mit einer mittleren horizontalen Beleuchtungsstärke von etwa 7,0 bis 9,0 lx
bei einer minimalen Beleuchtungsstärke von circa 2,0 lx ein »gutes« und Installationen
mit einer mittleren Beleuchtungsstärke von 3,0 bis 5,0 lx und einer minimalen Beleuchtungsstärke von 0,6 bis 0,9 lx ein »ausreichendes« Sicherheitsgefühl (im Vergleich zu dem Sicherheitsgefühl am Tage).
Studien haben darüber hinaus mit Blick auf adaptive Beleuchtungsinstallationen den Einfluss verschiedener Dimmcharakteristika und deren örtliche Verteilung auf das Sicherheitsgefühl untersucht; dabei konnte belegt werden, dass eine hohe Helligkeit
in der direkten Umgebung das größte Sicherheitsgefühl auslöst. Trotz dieser Fortschritte in der Erforschung des Einflusses von Beleuchtung auf das Sicherheitsempfinden bleiben verschiedenen Fragen offen. So gibt
es bei adaptiven Beleuchtungsanlagen weiteren Klärungsbedarf in Bezug auf Dimmwerte,
TWA-Fachgebiet
Physiologie und Wahrnehmung
Hochdimm- und Nachlaufzeiten. Vor allem
bedarf es weiterer Untersuchungen, um den Einfluss von vertikalen Beleuchtungsstärken
auf die Gesichtserkennung und Raumwahrneh- mung zu analysieren. Davon abgesehen gilt es, bei der kriminalitätsangstsenkenden Lichtplanung potentielle Zielkonflikte – beispielsweise in
Bezug auf die Reduzierung von Lichtverschmut- zung oder bezüglich der ästhetischen Wirkung eines Beleuchtungskonzepts – zu berücksichtigen.
Ausserdem müssen neben den verschiedenen quantitativen Empfehlungen für das Reduzieren von Kriminalitätsangst auch qualitative
Aspekte bei der Lichtplanung berücksichtigt und dabei vor allem die Dreidimensionalität des öffentlichen Raums in den Blick genommen werden. Dabei empfiehlt es sich, die drei Ortscharakteristika »Prospect«, »Refuge« und »Escape« (Fisher und Nasar) in der Nacht mittels der Beleuchtung lesbar zu machen.
This report provides an overview of the internal scientific evidence on violence prevention. A broad definition of violence is used, which includes legally punishable as well as nonpunishable and (early) risk factors for violence. A total of 26 prevention approaches were identified in the areas of the individual, the family, the school and victim assistance - the effectiveness of which are underpinned by international research results. Each chapter gives practitioners and decision-makers an idea of the objectives, program features and performance of the approaches. The purpose of this report is to strengthen the emerging momentum towards more evidence-based violence prevention around the world and provide a preliminary compass for prevention practitioners.
The objective of this study was to investigate how gender differentiates the perception of safety in urban parks. Gender was recognized in relation to selected, most important factors providing a sense of security classified into 6 groups: visibility, technical condition, cleanliness, external protection, other park users, and mobility facilities, in order to identify those of them which are significant for women as a group considered to be more insecure in public spaces than men. Survey questionnaires were administrated to a sample of randomly selected park users in Poland (N = 394; men and women) asked to indicate the importance of particular factors in the context of perceived safety. The results showed statistically significant differences in the perception of safety between groups of male and female respondents in the case of more than a half of the factors. This knowledge is crucial for designing more inclusive urban parks, so that they can meet the needs and expectations of both male and female users.
Quasi experimental (before-after) design with control group. Measurement of perceived safety after changes in public lightning: In total 6 projects in residential dwellings in wich traditional lightning was replaced by LED causing an increased but unbalanced lightning level. And 4 projects in non residential areas were lightning levels were decreased. All in the province Overijssel (Netherlands) . Language: Dutch
چکیده
نورپردازی بهبود یافته، تاکنون به منظور دستیابی به اهداف متعددی به کار گرفته شده است. یکی از آن ها جلوگیری از وقوع جرم است. حال
آن که تاثیر بهبود نورپردازی خیابانی با هدف جلوگیری از وقوع جرم، از اهدافی که به طور عمده و معمول، با اهمیت درنظر گرفته می شوند،
مانند سلامت پیاده و امنیت ترافیک، بسیار مهم تر است. درک این موضوع که بهبود نورپردازی خیابان ها می تواند به عنوان یک عامل
بازدارنده از وقوع جرم باشد، امر ساده ای است. این موضوع در رابطه با مراکزی که به طور مکرر، مورد وقوع جرم و بزه قرارگرفته اند از
جمله، اماکن عمومی، مناطق مسکونی، مراکز شهرنشینی و مکان های متعددی از این قبیل، حائز اهمیت است.
کلمات کلیدی: نورپردازی بهبود یافته، اماکن عمومی، پیشگیری از وقوع جرم، نورپردازی خیابانی، امنیت ترافیک، سلامت پیاده
Objectives
This study aims to assess the evidential value of the knowledgebase in criminology after accounting for the presence of potential Type I errors.Methods
The present study examines the distribution of 1248 p-values (that inform 84 statistically significant outcomes across 26 systematic reviews) in meta-analyses on the topic of crime and justice published by the Campbell Collaboration (CC) using p-curve analysis.ResultsThe distribution of all CC p-values have a significant cluster of p-values immediately below 0.05, which is indicative of p-hacking. Evidential value (right skewed p-curves) is detected in most meta-analytic topic areas but not motivational interviewing (substance use outcome), sex offender treatment (sexual/general recidivism), police legitimacy (procedural justice), street-level drug law enforcement (total crime), and treatment effectiveness in secure corrections (juvenile recidivism).Conclusions
More studies, especially carefully designed and implemented randomized experiments with sufficiently large sample sizes, are needed before we are able to affirm the presence of evidential value and replicability of studies in all CC topic areas with confidence.
This chapter addressed the question: what policing strategies and interventions or policing strategies combined with other agencies can reduce crime and increase public safety in the night-time economy? A rapid evidence assessment was conducted to locate and summarize relevant research from six electronic databases. Retained studies had to describe a policing or multi-agency intervention, focused on reducing a night-time economy problem, and to have collected data on patterns of criminal offences, public disorder, hospital attendance or public perceptions of safety and had to report an evaluation designed to test the intervention’s effectiveness. Twenty of 30 retained studies reported mainly positive results in terms of reductions in violent or other types of offending, in hospital admissions or in other outcomes indicating that interventions had been effective. Three sets of research studies reported results that indicated potential strategies for effective policing of the night-time economy: (1) restriction of alcohol sales, through reducing hours of access to licensed premises, (2) the exchange of data between hospital emergency departments and police forces enabling police to improve and sustain targeting of preventive efforts on high-risk venues and in some cases enhance the involvement of medical staff in meeting licensees and (3) various forms of multilevel community interventions including media or information campaigns, training of bar and door staff, engagement of licensees in aspects of management that differed across projects, but when combined with enforcement of licensing laws, yielded very beneficial results.
Neste Atlas da Violência 2020, produzido pelo Ipea e pelo Fórum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública (FBSP), construímos e analisamos inúmeros indicadores para melhor compreender o processo de acentuada violência no país.
Os números de óbitos são contabilizados a partir da Classificação Internacional de Doenças (CID-10) como eventos que envolvem agressões e óbitos provocados por intervenção legal (códigos X85-Y09 e Y35-Y36). A Classificação Internacional de Doenças é publicada pela Organização Mundial de Saúde (OMS) e padroniza a codificação de doenças e mortalidade por causas externas em todo o mundo desde 1893.
Os dados divulgados referem-se ao período de 2008 a 2018, considerando as informações mais recentes tabuladas pelo Sistema de Informações sobre Mortalidade (SIM) e divulgadas no site do Departamento de Informática do SUS – DATASUS.
This systematic review and meta-analysis investigated whether problem-solving court interventions that employed judicial supervision were more effective in reducing recidivism and improving well-being outcomes for offenders compared with conventional justice processes. More than 11,000 records were collected via a three-phase search strategy that identified 56 independent investigations that included 11,146 treatment and 12,091 comparison subjects. A total of 68 outcomes were assessed for risk of bias, with the majority (59.67%) rated ‘critical’ overall. A subset of recidivism outcomes (k = 22) that were included in a synthesis of relative incident rate ratios revealed a significant reduction in rearrests from pre-treatment to post-treatment among problem-solving court interventions as compared with treatment-as-usual processes. However, there was a high degree of unexplained heterogeneity observed among studies. An analysis of moderators revealed that mental health courts possessed larger treatment effects than both drug courts and driving while intoxicated courts, court programs that reported individualized treatment had greater effects than those that did not, and stronger treatment effects were found among programs that required frequent judicial supervision in the initial phases of treatment. More rigorous investigations, with detailed descriptions of treatment programs, are needed to better explain the sources of variance between and within court formats.
The present study examines the role of opportunity on crime counts within the multicontextual opportunity theoretical framework. We used weighted multilevel regression modeling of site observation data from a Cincinnati-based sample of 1003 apartments nested within 228 census block groups. Results indicate that only a couple of environmental design features are associated with crime in the expected direction, and some of these associations are neighborhood-context-dependent. We conclude that the results support the propositions of multicontextual opportunity theory suggesting that neighborhood level factors condition the relationship between micro level opportunity factors and crime. Since there is a scant literature on this topic, more research is needed to see if the findings hold true in other places.
This article questions the police capacity to apply all the evidence about the link between crimes and places. It reviews
what we know about crime places in six propositions. Most policing strategies are unable to take advantage of all six propositions.
Particular attention is drawn to place managers. Managers have the ability to address the factors that make places attractive
for crime or resistant to crime. Evidence suggests a regulatory approach to place management is more productive than a hot
spot enforcement approach. Most police agencies may not be willing or capable of applying a regulatory approach. Thus, it
might be advisable to create a new non-police agency to prevent crime at places. Not only might this be more effective, it
may also be less expensive and create fewer difficulties with communities.
Despite their importance in assessing the impact of policies, outcome evaluations—and in particular randomized experiments—are relatively rare. The rationalizations used to justify the absence of outcome evaluations include such assertions as “we know our programs are working,”“they can't possibly harm anyone,” and “if they only help one kid they're worth it.” Using preliminary results from a systematic review of nine randomized experiments of the Scared Straight, or prison visitation program, the authors show that a popular and well-meaning program can have harmful effects. They use these results to argue for more rigorous evaluations to test criminal justice interventions.
This study reports on an evaluation of the effects of street lights on crime in several Indianapolis neighborhoods. Crime was measured in terms of calls for police service (CFS). Using a quasiexperimental design, we performed analyses on four multiblock areas, three intersections, and two aggregated address groups. Two control areas were matched to two multiblock areas that received enhanced lighting. Of the nine target areas, six showed evidence of lower CFS volumes after more lighting. We analyzed the mean weekly CFS in the pre- and postinstallation periods. Two lighted areas had a lower mean weekly CFS after installation. The more illuminated target area experienced a greater reduction in average CFS for property and miscellaneous crimes than did the control area.
Systematic reviews use rigorous methods for locating, appraising, and synthesizing evidence from prior evaluation studies. They have explicit objectives, explicit criteria for including or excluding studies, and a structured and detailed report. The Campbell Collaboration Crime and Justice Group aims to prepare and maintain systematic reviews of criminological interventions and to make them accessible electronically to scholars, practitioners, policy makers, and the general public. The major challenges include setting methodological criteria for including studies in reviews, securing continued funding, academics needing publications in scholarly journals, and coping with the volume of work needed to maintain high standards, including refereeing proposals and final reviews and dealing with correspondence and unsolicited proposals. The aim of making the best knowledge about the effectiveness of criminological interventions immediately available to everyone is ambitious and very important.
Studies investigating the positive effect that improved street lighting has on crime and the fear of crime have become remarkably popular. Impressive results have regularly been reported. However, while most use the ‘before-and-after’ interview format, many neglect to have a long enough follow-up period or to control for the effect that interviewing at different times of the year may have.
The study reported here is based on a twelve-month follow-up period, and controls exactly for time of year at follow-up interview stage. Further, in addition to relighting the area surrounding the homes of respondents, other external environmental improvements were effected, and the security precautions of the homes of respondents were substantially improved.
In spite of this, little improvement in victimization or fear of victimization could be documented. Some improvement might have been noticed had respondents been consulted when the nature and type of improvements were being planned. It is more likely that improved street lighting is no panacea for all ills, and may only be effective under certain conditions.
Crime prevention projects assumed an enhanced importance during the 1980s in a number of countries. This paper assesses the experience of crime prevention projects to date, and argues for a mixed strategy of situational, social and developmental crime prevention for the future. Additionally, potential problems in inter‐agency co‐operation in local crime prevention projects need to be more honestly faced, and evolving policies in the crime prevention field should be appropriately evaluated by adequately rigorous research. Attention should be paid to the relationship between crime prevention and wider social trends and policies.
Patterns of crime should be seen as the outcome of crime-control policies and the distribution of opportunities. Such crime-control policies are often argued to have the limited effect of displacing crime, that is, substituting new crimes for prevented crimes. Displacement alone is an inadequate concept; a better formulation centers on the deflection of crime from a target. Some patterns of deflected crime can be regarded as "benign" displacement, while others are considered "malign." Thus conceived, deflection can be used as a policy tool to achieve a more "desirable" pattern of crime. It is already so used, inter alia, by insurance companies with a commercial motive. Better information systems are required to show displacement or deflection, and to assist in monitoring the distribution of crime through space and time. Patterns of criminal activity and victimization can be conceptualized as an outcome of conscious and unconscious decisions by the public, politicians, and the police. These patterns are no...
Situational prevention seeks to reduce opportunities for specific categories of crime by increasing the associated risks and difficulties and reducing the rewards. It is composed of three main elements: an articulated theoretical framework, a standard methodology for tackling specific crime problems, and a set of opportunity-reducing techniques. The theoretical framework is informed by a variety of "opportunity" theories, including the routine activity and rational choice perspectives. The standard methodology is a version of the action research paradigm in which researchers work with practitioners to analyze and define the problem, to identify and try out possible solutions, and to evaluate and disseminate the results. The opportunity-reducing techniques range from simple target hardening to more sophisticated methods of deflecting offenders and reducing inducements. Displacement of crime has not proved to be the serious problem once thought, and there is now increasing recognition that situational measu...
In recent years, in the United Kingdom and other industrialized countries, there has been a growing interest in the economic costs and benefits of efforts to prevent crime. Little is known, however, about the economic value of the principal strategies. This paper reviews the costs and benefits of situational crime prevention. Thirteen situational crime prevention studies permitted the calculation of benefit to cost ratios, enabling an assessment of programme efficiency. In general, benefits were calculated more conservatively than costs. There were no consistent relationships between the studies' benefit-cost ratios and either the primary intervention technique employed or the primary crime targeted by the intervention. Current knowledge suggests that situational prevention can be an economically efficient strategy for the reduction of crime. However, future evaluations need better designs, more adequate estimates of costs and benefits and longer follow-up periods.
This paper analyzes an experiment designed to demonstrate the effects of high intensity street lights on nighttime crime. The statistical methodology is developed around an interrupted time series design and illustrates the hazards that can arise if the serial dependence of successive observations is ignored.
The influence of religion on delinquency has been debated for more than 30 years, and yet, there remains a lack of consensus about the nature of this relationship. In an effort to bring some clarity to this area, this study assesses the religion-delinquency literature by using a methodological approach to reviewing a body of literature that is new to the social sciences—the systematic review (SR). This SR revealed that the literature is not disparate or contradictory, as previous studies have suggested. Religious measures are generally inversely related to deviance, and this is especially true among the most rigorous studies. As criminologists continue to examine the neglected topic of religion or what has been referred to as the forgotten factor, this article is a warning that measurement issues around a complex topic like religion, or even spirituality or forgiveness, is of paramount concern. The findings further indicate that future research on delinquency may gain explanatory power by incorporating religious variables in relevant theoretical models.
Property offenders construct cognitive images of the physical environment to decide where to commit crimes. At least three levels of target selection occur-neighborhoods, or regions; street blocks; and specific sites. Information on the physical characteristics of neighborhoods, such as ease of entry and exit, the number of internal boundaries limiting ease of circulation, and signs of guardianship or of incivilities, are weighed by the offender to determine risks, opportunities, and conveniences. This framework for understanding links between offenders and the physical environment provides a typology for evaluating research on environmental design and crime prevention, especially research on defensible-space theory, territorial perspectives, and the incivilities thesis. The incivilities thesis suggests that offenders take into account social and physical incivilities when deciding which neighborhood to choose as crime targets. Three recent studies involving neighborhoods in Atlanta, Georgia, Baltimore, Maryland, and Hartford, Connecticut, show that the effects of environmental design on crime range from small to moderate. Available research suggests that crime prevention efforts should be directed at the street-block rather than at the neighborhood level of analysis.
An experiment investigates the effect of changes in one factor (the independent variable) on another (the dependent variable). The independent variable is under the control of the researcher. A randomized experiment is one in which people (or other units) are assigned to conditions according to a table of random numbers, with every person having the same probability of being assigned to each condition. These experiments are especially useful for testing causal hypotheses. Their unique advantage over other methods is their high internal validity, or high ability to demonstrate the effect of one factor on another. The randomization ensures that people assigned to one condition are equivalent in every possible way to those assigned to another condition, within the limits of statistical fluctuation. Despite their methodological advantages, very few randomized experiments have been carried out on crime and justice topics. Most have investigated the effects of providing special help for offenders, and in most cases this help proved no more effective in reducing reoffending than did existing alternative treatment methods. It is difficult to arrange randomized experiments because program administrators are unwilling to relinquish control of assignment to experimenters, and because of ethical problems of denial of treatment. Randomized experiments are most feasible when the effects of a treatment are unknown and when it is impossible to treat everyone. Because of their high internal validity, hypotheses should be tested, and technologies should be evaluated, using randomized experiments whenever possible.
The “crime prevention through environmental design” approach suggests that the public's fear of crime might be reduced through redesigning the built environment. Two studies are reported examining the relationship between fear and the environment. The first study, an inventory of unsafe places, provides an answer to the question that characteristics mainly determine the perceived lack of safety of a location. Results suggest that unsafe places are particularly those that are quiet and deserted and are poorly lighted. In the second study, an experiment, the impact of improved street lighting on fear, subjective victimization risks, and the perceived likelihood of bystander intervention is evaluated. Results suggest that increases in the level of street lighting decrease fear and the other parameters. Some policy implications are discussed.
In this review of 122 evaluations of crime prevention projects, the measures evaluated were grouped into six general categories: campaigns and publicity; policing and other surveillance; environmental design or improvement; social and community services; security devices; target removal or modification. Using objective indices of crime, about half of the measures evaluated were found to be effective. Successes were documented in all six categories of measures, but target removal or modification enjoyed the largest number of successes and social and community services the least.
This article examines the argument that crime prevention programs which stress opportunity reduction or increased risk to offenders are without value because they merely displace crime—that is, shift its incidence to other forms, times, and locales. The paper is based in part on two empirical studies that examined the criminal histories of and interviews with 146 robbers and burglars.
Deterministic and opportunistic criminal behavior and the influence of personality, age, and crime type on the displace ment potential of various offenders are analyzed. The results suggest that there are definite limits to various displacement possibilities. Some crimes are so opportunistic that their pre vention in one circumstance will not lead to their occurrence in another. Even in instances where offenders blocked in one sphere would wish to operate in another, limits and costs will lessen the frequency of operation and therefore reduce the overall crime rate.
The study further suggests that the limitations to displace ment are most salient for specific types of crimes, criminals, and geographic areas. Thus the displacement potential of an anticrime strategy can be gauged in advance and, in certain instances, be minimized.
Two research projects were carried out to investigate the effects of improved street lighting on crime in Dudley and Stoke-on-Trent. In Dudley, crimes decreased by 41% in the experimental area, compared with a 15% decrease in a control area. In Stoke, crimes decreased by 43% in the experimental area and by 45% in two adjacent areas, compared with a decrease of only 2% in two control areas. In the two projects, the financial savings (from reduced crimes) exceeded the financial costs by between 2.4 and 10 times after one year. It is concluded that improved street lighting can be extremely cost-effective.
Concern about crime victimisation and the fear of victimisation has traditionally centred on the elderly, particularly on older women. It is unquestioningly assumed that young people- particularly young men - are mostly fearless, and that even when fearful, unamenable to change. Research carried out among a student population in Glasgow shows that both assumptions may well be false. Student pedestrians of both sexes can be very fearful of victimisation, and improved lighting can considerably lessen these fears.
This paper recommends a method of evaluating a community crime prevention program called Communities that Care. The distinctive feature of this program is that it systematically assesses local risk factors for youth crime and implements tried and tested prevention strategies to tackle them. The evaluation design involves comparing experimental and control communities and taking measures of key outcome variables (crime, delinquency, substance abuse and adolescent problem behaviour) before and after the intervention package. The design is justified by reference to internal validity, methods of statistical analysis are discussed, and previous community crime prevention programs in the UK are reviewed.
The main aim of this research was to assess the effect of improved street lighting on crime. In Dudley, victimisation surveys were carried out before and after improved lighting in experimental and control areas. A similar study was carried out in Stoke-on-Trent, but crime rates were studied in experimental, adjacent and control areas. In both places, the prevalence and incidence of crime decreased after the improved lighting in the experimental area compared with the control area. There was also a decrease in crime in the adjacent area in Stoke, suggesting diffusion of benefits from the experimental area. There was no change in police-recorded crime in Stoke. Cost-benefit analyses showed that the tangible savings from crimes prevented more than paid off the full capital costs of the improved lighting within one year.
Applying CPTED (Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design) strategies to schools can significantly contribute to a safer learning environment by influencing the behaviour of students and visitors. CPTED has three overlapping primary concepts that are intended to reduce opportunities for crime as well as fear of crime: access control, surveillance and territorial reinforcement.
The impact of crime prevention on commercial burglary in a section of Portland, Oregon is assessed. Using time series analysis, and a control area for comparison, some of the problems of previous crime prevention research are addressed. The results of the study discussed show that not only was there a significant reduction in commercial burglary, but the effect persisted. Several rival hypotheses which could explain this reduction are rejected and suggestions for future research are offered.
The main aim of this research is to evaluate the impact of improved street lighting on crime in a local authority housing estate in Dudley, West Midlands. It is argued that high quality evaluation designs, for example, comparing experimental and control areas and including before and after measures of crime, are needed to evaluate situational crime prevention initiatives. Previously, in a design of this kind using household victimization surveys to measure crime, we demonstrated that crime decreased after the street lighting was improved. The main aim of this paper is to investigate whether the same results are obtained in a self-report survey of young people, also given in experimental and control areas before and after the improved street lighting. It is argued that self-reported delinquency is a valid and reliable measure of offending. The self-report results corroborated the victimization survey results in showing that offending decreased in the experimental area compared to the control area. Also, the young people thought
This article has been published in the journal, Crime Prevention Studies [© Criminal Justice Press]. Consideration of the literature concerning street lighting effects on crime yields the following conclusions: (1) Precisely targeted increases in street lighting generally have crime reduction effects. (2)More general increases in street lighting seem to have crime prevention effects, but this outcome is not universal. Older and U.S. research yield fewer positive results than more recent U.K. research. (3) Even untargeted increases in crime prevention generally make residents less fearful of crime or more confident of their own safety at night. (4) In the most recent and sophisticated studies, street lighting improvements are associated with crime reductions in the daytime as well as during the hours of darkness. (5) The debate about lighting effects has served to preclude a more refined analysis of the means by and circumstances in which lighting might reduce crime. Our aim should now be to use context-appropriate lighting schemes as part of a full repertoire of crime reduction tactics. Recommendations based upon a strategic view of current crime reduction policy are made about how lighting effects could be darified and elaborated. The provisions of the British Crime and Disorder Act 1998 constitute a potential vehicle for lighting programmes operating within crime reduction schemes generally.
The effectiveness of crime deterrence projects such as increased street lighting in ghetto environments has been questioned. The present study not only examines whether increased street lighting in fact reduces crime, but also investigates the attitudes towards local government of citizens who live within that particular environment. The findings illustrate that it would be advisable for governments to address citizen attitudes before undertaking certain crime prevention projects.
Improving city streets for use at night: The Norfolk experiment. Nor-folk, VA: Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority Final evaluation report of the "High Intensity Street Lighting Program
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Throwing light on crime: A study of the relationship between street lighting and crime prevention
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Practical meta-analysis
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Costs and benefits of preventing crime
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Street lighting, crime and fear of crime: A summary of re-search Preventing crime and disorder: Targeting strate-gies and responsibilities
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The impact of street lighting on street crime
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Situational crime prevention Building a safer society: Strategic approaches to crime prevention
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