Kinda, sometimes. But this field is also fraught with tons of "bad implementations of a good idea", making the problem worse, as well as intuitions that don't hold up to empirical studies.
Classic example is a neighborhood adds extra bright streetlamps and neighbors install extra-bright flood lights on their garages. This illuminates some areas, but the areas that are missed become even "darker" because the extra light in people's eyes ruins night vision. Hiding in the bushes with your black thieving skimask (or along the fence line, or just off the road) becomes even more effective, and everyone else just gets a bright streetlight shining into their bedroom window all night long.
There's a whole subculture of designers talking about what makes effective street lighting, but it basically comes down to less blue light aimed more downwards.
And the best crime deterrent is having a lively neighborhood with more eyes on the street in the Jacobs-ey fashion. I heard of one crime study that considered lighting and cameras and all those things but found the best predictor of low crime rates was how many dogs lived in the neighborhood (and therefore people outside walking their dogs).
It's even worse; many cities have opted for blue, narrow-band LED street lighting in recent years which is actually missing so much from the color spectrum that your vision operates worse within the lit areas, and it gets harder to detect boundaries between objects and motion. Not to mention it screws with peoples' circadian rhythms.
What we have is a situation where our city, state and federal governments know jack shit about the science behind proper lighting or why it's so important for both people and wildlife to get high-quality, whole-spectrum, 10-25KHz+ PWM lighting.
And contractors take advantage of this, charging exorbitant amounts of money for intentionally sub-par lighting systems. It's a crime against both nature and humanity.
> There's a whole subculture of designers talking about what makes effective street lighting, but it basically comes down to less blue light aimed more downwards.
Considering the context of crime prevention, it is rather ironic therefore that police stations traditionally have none other than blue lamps above their doors!
I'd be willing to bet this isn't the case: even in unsafe areas dogs need to go outside to do their business. I doubt there's a natural experiment out there that could demonstrate causality...
Kinda, sometimes. But this field is also fraught with tons of "bad implementations of a good idea", making the problem worse, as well as intuitions that don't hold up to empirical studies.
Classic example is a neighborhood adds extra bright streetlamps and neighbors install extra-bright flood lights on their garages. This illuminates some areas, but the areas that are missed become even "darker" because the extra light in people's eyes ruins night vision. Hiding in the bushes with your black thieving skimask (or along the fence line, or just off the road) becomes even more effective, and everyone else just gets a bright streetlight shining into their bedroom window all night long.
There's a whole subculture of designers talking about what makes effective street lighting, but it basically comes down to less blue light aimed more downwards.
And the best crime deterrent is having a lively neighborhood with more eyes on the street in the Jacobs-ey fashion. I heard of one crime study that considered lighting and cameras and all those things but found the best predictor of low crime rates was how many dogs lived in the neighborhood (and therefore people outside walking their dogs).