Practice Profile: Improved Street Lighting

Evidence Rating for Outcomes

Crime & Delinquency | Multiple crime/offense types

Crime & Delinquency | Property offenses

Crime & Delinquency | Violent offenses

Date: This profile was posted on March 09, 2015

A crime prevention strategy that aims to improve the lighting on streets to reduce crime through modifying and improving environmental measures. The practice is rated Promising for reducing crime and property offenses but rated Ineffective for violent offenses.

Practice Goals/Practice Components

Interventions that focus on improving street lighting aim to prevent crime by modifying an environment and reducing opportunities for crimes to be committed. These interventions may occur in public or private settings, such as residential neighborhoods, parking lots, shopping malls, campuses, hospitals, or various other facilities. Installation and street light components vary by setting. For example, in a neighborhood or residential setting, improved street lighting may include trimming bushes so that lights are more visible, or replacing old or broken lamps with new light fixtures to achieve the street light’s intended purpose. Through modifying and improving environmental measures in various settings, the overall goal of these interventions is crime prevention (Clark 2008; Welsh and Farrington 2008).

Program Theory

Improving street lighting to prevent crime is grounded in two main perspectives: 1) situational crime prevention, and 2) strengthening informal social control and community cohesion. Taken together, situational crime prevention and informal social controls hold that crime is influenced by environmental conditions in interaction with resident and offender characteristics. Therefore, by improving street lighting, there is believed to be a greater risk of apprehension, while residents are believed to invest more in their community and thus work to prevent crime in their community.

Situational crime prevention focuses on reducing the opportunities for crime, while also increasing the perceived risk of apprehension. It is believed that modifying the nighttime visibility within urban areas should reduce opportunities for crime by increasing the perceived risk of detection (Jacobs 1961; Welsh and Farrington 2008).

Informal social controls and community cohesion also play a key role in these interventions. According to Sampson (1997), a low degree of “collective efficacy,” also referred to as social control, in a neighborhood typically results in high crime rates. Therefore, installing or improving street lighting in an area, a sign of positive investment, might signal to residents that efforts are being made to improve their community. This improvement might lead to community pride and cohesion for residents. As a result, residents may have a personal investment in the area, causing an increased interest in watching over their community (Welsh and Farrington 2008).

Meta-Analysis Snapshot
	Literature Coverage Dates	Number of Studies	Number of Study Participants
Meta Analysis 1	1974-1999	13	0

Meta Analysis 1

Welsh and Farrington (2008) reviewed studies on improved street lighting, which were completed in 2006 and earlier. The researchers searched electronic bibliographic databases, literature reviews on the effectiveness of improved street lighting in preventing crime, bibliographies of street lighting studies, and contacted leading researchers. Both published and unpublished reports were included in the search, which was not limited to the English language and was international in scope.

All studies included had to have a reasonably comparable control area, and a design that reported before-and-after measures of crime in the experimental and control areas. The included studies had to have improved street lighting as the main intervention, which was typically identified by the study authors. Additionally, to be eligible for inclusion studies had to include at least one outcome measure of crime. Finally, to be included in the meta-analysis, studies had to show that there were at least 20 crimes reported in an area prior to the intervention so that a sufficient number of crimes were available to detect changes in crime rates.

The search yielded 13 evaluations that were included in the meta-analysis. Eight studies took place in the United States, of which four took place in residential neighborhoods, three in residential and commercial areas, and one in a city center. Five studies took place in England, of which two took place in a local authority housing estate, one in a parking garage, one in a residential neighborhood, and one in a city center market.

The relative effect size (which can be interpreted as an incident rate ratio) was used to measure effect size. A random effects model was used to examine the impact of improved street lighting on overall crime, property crime, and violent crime.

Date Created: July 17, 2024

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Practice Snapshot

Setting (Delivery): Other Community Setting, High Crime Neighborhoods/Hot Spots

Practice Type: Community-Oriented Policing, Community Awareness/Mobilization, Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design/Design Against Crime, General deterrence, Situational Crime Prevention

Unit of Analysis: Places

Practice Profile: Improved Street Lighting

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Practice Summary

Practice Description

Practice Goals/Practice Components

Program Theory

Meta-Analysis Outcomes

Meta-Analysis Methodology

Cost

Evidence-Base (Meta-Analyses Reviewed)

Additional References

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