By Cozens, P. M., Neale, R. H., Whitaker, J., Hillier, D., Graham, M.

This paper critically examines the relationship between street lighting and crime in the British city context. Prompted by recent government investment to modernize street lighting, the authors analyze how lighting affects both actual crime rates and fear of crime. It questions the reliability of current British Standards (BS 5489) that are used to determine lighting needs, pointing out discrepancies between official crime data and public perceptions of safety. Drawing on historical and contemporary research, the paper suggests that improved lighting can contribute to crime reduction and greater public confidence, but only when contextually appropriate. The review calls for a broader understanding of how urban lighting affects both real and perceived safety, arguing that current approaches may miss critical socio-environmental dynamics.

(Crime Prevention and Community Safety: An International Journal, Volume 5, Issue 2, 2003, pp. 7–24)

By Aaron Chalfin, Benjamin Hansen, Jason Lerner, and Lucie Parker

This paper offers experimental evidence that crime can be successfully reduced by changing the situational environment that potential victims and offenders face. We focus on a ubiquitous but surprisingly understudied feature of the urban landscape – street lighting – and report the first experimental evidence on the effect of street lighting on crime. Through a unique public partnership in New York City, temporary streetlights were randomly allocated to public housing developments from March through August 2016. We find evidence that communities that were assigned more lighting experienced sizable reductions in crime. After accounting for potential spatial spillovers, we find that the provision of street lights led, at a minimum, to a 36 percent reduction in nighttime outdoor index crimes.

NBER Working Paper No. 25798 Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2019 45p.