The furor over CCTV

So it turns out that each 1,000 CCTV cameras in London has only been responsible for solving one crime. Justification for the continued use (and expansion) of video surveillance comes from the Home Office ("[cameras] help communities feel safer") and from the police, with the BBC reporting "more needed to be done to make the most of the investment."  Meanwhile, Michael Cross, writing in the Guardian, brings up the not-very-new idea that we could make all CCTV camera feeds freely available to the entire populace, resulting in some sort of democratic surveillance.  (Surely this assumes that we've all got unlimited time to spend on virtual curtain-twitching - although with the impending end of Big Brother in the UK, perhaps now all the poor souls who were habitual viewers would relish the opportunity to tune in to their local high streets.)

These revelations (not that an odious reality television show is being cancelled, but that London's CCTV systems aren't as useful as has been routinely made out) return me to another debate, about the relationship between lighting in public spaces, surveillance, and crime

It would seem common-sense to reason that improved natural surveillance reduces crime - this is a fundamental tenet of the CPTED (crime prevention through environmental design) crowd - and that better street lighting, which improves natural surveillance, would reduce crime.

A 2002 UK Home Office research study by Farrington and Welsh, which collated the results of a number of other studies, appeared to show the improved street lighting reduces crime, while another study appeared to show that CCTV surveillance isn't very effective. See HORS 251 and 252 for the papers. The outcomes were pretty widely reported in the press.

However, the research linking street lighting and crime is actually a bit inconclusive. The problem comes up with close study of the reports and the statistical evidence. ICLEI and the British Astronomical Society give a good overview, so I won't repeat their claims here; the britastro website is obviously heavily biased towards the 'dark skies' perspective, but does raise some good points.

My personal view is:

1. That the statistics don't say much partly because crime statistics are notoriously flawed. The many variables in the ways in which crime is reported (or not) and how data is handled, the complex socio-economic differences between areas, and factors in urban and architectural design all make it incredibly difficult to make comparisons between areas and crime-reporting jurisdictions; and

2. That street lighting is likely to be a deterrent in certain circumstances, for example where there is already some (but not necessarily much) night-time activity on a street, and thus where good lighting will enable easier natural surveillance on the part of passers-by and residents. Where there is no life on the street - i.e. in purely industrial/commercial areas, closed or overshadowed places etc. - I would imagine that no improvement in lighting would have a substantive effect on crime; if the criminal, be he opportunistic or scheming, knows that there's no-one around for miles, then the light will simply aid him. What this would mean is that we should be looking at lighting as part of our approach to the way we build our towns and cities: Harking back to Jane Jacobs and countless other thinkers from many schools, we need to remember the benefits of truly public, easily navigable space, of mixed uses, and of reasonably high density.