Scientists Change Light Bulbs At Truman State To Darken The Night Skies

[caraher]

4. It sounds true but research doesn't back that up

It seems at best equivocal:

There is no clear scientific evidence that increased outdoor lighting deters crimes. It may make us feel safer, but has not been shown to make us safer.

There seems to be one recent study getting a lot of buzz suggesting more lighting deters some types of crime:

In contrast to previous outdoor lighting studies, the New York study shows an expected and dramatically significant correlation with crime at night.

Specifically, at night there was a 39% reduction in index crimes. Previous reports into lighting and crime undertaken in the US and the UK over the last two decades show a mixed picture, with lighting reducing crime in about half the studies but, significantly, not at night. The New York study, by contrast, shows an expected and dramatically significant correlation with crime at night.

But rarely is a single study conclusive. The bigger trend seems to be studies that don't see much of an effect, beyond boosting a sense of safety.

Although the research tends to not support a link between improved lighting and crime reduction, one thing is certain: People think that brighter lights at night make them safer. A 2015 study found that people in England associated “well-lit streets with competent and trustworthy government,” and that efforts to reduce nighttime lighting “tapped into deep-seated anxieties about darkness, modernity ‘going backwards’ and local governance.”