Lighting the way: park pathways can encourage criminal activity, but they don't have to with proper lighting and design

Parks & Recreation, May, 2004 by Thomas McKay

Many of us have a preconceived notion about what makes a park safe. However, few of us look at the design of our parks as if we were the criminals, or would feel confident in describing all the elements required to make it safe. * As a police officer and Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) specialist with the Peel Regional Police in Brampton, Ontario, Canada, I use my knowledge and experience of CPTED and the criminal element to question everything and never look at a property the same way again. This helps me to objectively conduct a thorough and situational assessment of all the factors that influence the safety of our environment, including the assessment of frequently overlooked variables that form the generally accepted practice. * The lighting of paved walkways is routinely accepted and seldom, if ever, challenged. (Refer to pictures #1 and #2 on the next page.) Yet I would ask each of you to disregard the policy and take a moment to select the picture that you feel represents the satyr situation. If you chose the isolated path (Picture # 1) as the proper lighting application, then you have based your selection on the need to light the most dangerous walkway scenario. People who generally pick this picture tend to unconditionally equate lighting with improved safety, and believe that the presence of lighting alone is enough to improve safety.* If you selected the walkway that borders the houses (Picture #2) as the proper lighting application, you inevitably based your decision on the belief' that a safe environment only occurs when lighting and witnesses are combined. A populated walkway, over the isolated one, has all the elements to make it safe. It is, in my opinion, this fact that makes the populated walkway the proper choice.

Lighting in the absence of witnesses should never be equated with safety. Crimes routinely occur in well-lit, yet inadequately populated, areas. This is certainly true of our walkway example where all the criminal activity is concentrated in the isolated section of the walk, despite the fact that the populated section is separated by nothing more than a municipal street. The safety ramifications don't end there, however. The mere fact that a walkway is lit will influence people to use it. This is particularly true of the average person who relies on little more than his instincts to keep him free of harm.

Unfortunately the same cannot be said of the criminal, who consciously looks for crime opportunities that minimize his risks. In the case of the isolated walkway, they recognize that the walkway itself serves as a movement predictor that leads potential victims past a point of their choice at a time that reinforces their advantage. This inevitably occurs after dusk when there are fewer people around. What then can be said of a lit, yet isolated, walkway should a crime occur?

In the event of a crime, it can be argued that the lights have done little more than rob potential victims of their night vision, while literally leading them down the proverbial garden path. This makes the criminals more difficult to see, who, by virtue of the lights, are themselves in a better position to engage in target selection while visually clearing the area for potential witnesses and interveners. The net effect is increased victimization and a policy in need of review.

In order to achieve the reduction of crime and loss, you must ask yourself two questions: "What are you trying to do?" and "How can we do it better?" This might, for example, result in the development of additional activities throughout the park or the strategic redistribution of existing activities in order to maintain a safe critical intensity of people. Only alter the viability and impact of these more basic, function-oriented changes has been assessed, will you be in a position to definitively resolve the matter of whether to light the walkway.

In this regard, assess the level of anticipated activity in the vicinity of the walkway. If the level continues to fall short of the critical intensity of people needed to keep the walkway safe, remove the walkway lights until such time as a safe level of activity can be reached. While potentially controversial, the removal of the lights will naturally direct users to better-observed and well-traveled routes along sidewalks through populated areas that are consistent with basic street-proofing advice. It will further increase safety by reducing the attraction to the criminal element, who will quickly recognize that the walkway yields fewer crime opportunities, and those that remain will be less desirable given an increased tendency to walk in groups, pairs or with dogs. These benefits notwithstanding, the probability that an existing lighting system would ever be removed in such a circumstance is unlikely, to say the least.

Banishing Bright Lights

The overuse of park lighting in parking lots and along walkways, whether isolated or not, can encourage the presence of people within the park at times when they're no longer desired. In the case of lighted parks, this routinely occurs after 11 p.m. when the park is supposed to be closed.