[CFDS] over-zealous, erroneous approaches

["p.marchant" <p.marchant@tinyworld....uk>]

Dear Tom and CFDSers,

Tom I have requested the road safety paper by separate email.

I have read your piece in the ILE Lighting Journal Jan / Feb 04 about
the "light pollution lobby's over-zealous, erroneous approach".

You also say  ..."The hard work done by numerous researchers has
demonstrated the crime deterrence effect of lighting.  However the Light
Pollution and Astronomy document winds back the clock by not fully
understanding their work"

But alas it is you  who does not understand and has the erroneous approach.
In an earlier (2004) post Subject:  'Light and crime and solid science',
when we were addressing this light and crime matter, it was clear by what
you said you  know little about the subject of statistics and I
must say, whether crime really increases or decreases is a highly
statistical matter.

I have an article which was published in April , see below, which grew out
of an
article I was asked write after my presentation at the Royal Statistical
Society conference last year. It should help explain things.
I can explain to others also, at the ILE conference, to put everyone
straight but I have yet to hear about this. So please chase this as I'm sure
you and your colleagues would not wish to mislead the public by claiming
there is good evidence when
truly there  is none.

The paper is   'What works? A Critical Note on the Evaluation of Crime
Reduction Initiatives' in Crime Prevention and Community Safety: An
International Journal 2005 Vol7 No. 2  pp 7-13. It  shows simply, the
fundamental errors in work which purports to show that lighting reduces
crime.

http://www.extenza-eps.com/extenza/contentviewing/viewJournalIssueTOC.do?issueId=5252

The following links contain other material on lighting and crime that shows
the research evidence, often quoted by the lighting industry to claim that
lighting reduces crime, is in fact catastrophically flawed:

1
http://www.maths.leeds.ac.uk/statistics/rss/archive/previous_2004.html
Shows at the top of the page
a) The British Journal of Criminology paper of April 2004 Vol 44 pp441-447
P R Marchant  'A demonstration that the claim that brighter lighting reduces
crime is unfounded.'
and
b) the presentation to the Royal Statistical Society International
Conference
of Sept 2004

2
http://www.herts.ac.uk/business/staff_public/nhspencer_public/seminars/index.htm
This contains a longer seminar presentation, done at the University of
Hertfordshire in Jan. 2005, part of the statistics seminar series.
Also at this site is a short article which shows, in simple terms, what the
flaws in the lighting and indeed other crime intervention research are.
Principally, 1) Correlated rather than independent events and 2) regression
towards the mean. This is an early version of the paper mentioned published
in Crime Prevention and Community Safety Vol 7 No. 2  pp 7-13.

3
There is a paper, "Failing to measure any effect of increased lighting on
crime",
http://www.imresearch.org/PraxisCentre/Papers/RevReplyToFW1B.pdf
which shows that there are still catastrophic flaws and misunderstandings in
the justifications given in the reply to my April 2004 British Journal of
Criminology paper.


The true state of knowledge is that it is not known what light does to
crime. It is possible that in general light  increases  crime and so it
would be unfortunate to spend lots of money on lighting if this were indeed
the case.

I hope that helps

Paul Marchant





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