24
Sep
2013
By Calvin at 08:36 GMT, 12 years ago
Since British Summer time ends on 27th October this year and the nights are drawing in earlier I thought it would be a good idea to run a series of weekly posts highlighting the importance of lighting around our homes. Many police services notice a little spike in crime at the end of October, early November, which may be connected with the clock changes, so now’s a good time to check your outside lighting and make arrangements to install new ones if you need them.
I hope you find the information useful, but if you want more do please go to the lighting section on this website.
The benefits and limitations of external lighting
We use lights outside our homes not just for security, but also for aesthetic effect, practicality, safety and socializing, but sometimes I see so much installed lighting around people’s homes (especially those so-called ‘security floodlights’) that I do just wonder if we’re sometimes missing a rather important point about lighting. And that important point is..... that it is a combination of light AND an increased chance of the criminal being seen by a responsive witness that must work together in order for anybody to claim that domestic lighting is a deterrent to crime.
In other words, there’s little point in lighting up an unobservable place because the light may actually benefit the thief!
This fact may come as a surprise to some people, because we are flooded (even floodlit) with exaggerated claims about the benefits of lighting. Here’s a few phrases picked off the internet at random from retail sites and police sites. “Lights are always a good deterrent” “Without doubt security lighting is a major deterrent against burglary” “Solar security lights are perfect for keeping your residence safe, by discouraging potential intruders” “This Security Floodlight is ideal for an initial security measure around your home”
And we seem to be gripped by the cave dwellers notion that lighting fires will keep the wild animals away. Well they might have done, but the thief is a different beast!
But please don’t misunderstand what I’m saying. I’m NOT saying that external lights have no use; of course they do, but they’ve got to be of the right type and in the right place.
Evidence does certainly suggest that people feel safer at night in well lit public places when they can see everything around them and the same can be said about your home if you can look out onto your lit back garden from the safety of an upstairs window or the patio doors. It’s just good to be able to check what’s going on in the garden and outside the front door late at night, especially if you’ve just heard a noise outside.
Another way that external lighting may help us is if the presence of the light convinces the criminal that what he is about to do will be seen by you or your neighbours or somebody walking along the street or maybe a CCTV camera. However, a research paper written in 2004 by Ian Hearnden and Christine Magill and published by the Home Office entitled Decision-making by house burglars: offenders perspectives is interesting in that lighting is not mentioned by burglars as something that puts them off targeting a particular house. To be fair to those of you who think light works all the time the sample was small and the authors didn’t ask the burglars a direct question about lighting. Nevertheless when they were asked what things were more likely to put them off the main deterrents were: Evidence of occupancy, the presence of an alarm or CCTV camera and the apparent strength of the doors and windows. One of these findings does however indicate an effective use for lighting, which is to use it to give the impression that you are home.
So, you can put external lights anywhere you think might be useful, but don’t think that all of them are going to make much difference to your security.
Now, it’s quite clear that lots of people have thought about these questions already, but have reached rather different conclusions. This is evidenced by the installation of hundreds of thousands of tungsten halogen floodlights that are switched on by passive infrared detectors with the idea that a sudden bright light shining down the garden will scare away the intruder. I will discuss the pros and cons of these types of lights in a future post, but I have yet to find any evidence that supports their ‘scare away’ effect.
It is perfectly understandable why people install these floodlights, especially if they’ve just been burgled; because it’s quite natural for victims to try anything that might prevent themselves from being victimised again. But you must ask yourself this question: ‘If the burglar has already established that you are not at home (having rung your doorbell or seen you go out) and your neighbours are curled up in front of the TV with the curtains drawn, is the sudden onset of a bright light going to scare the intruder away? If the sudden appearance of light is noticed will it be reported to the police and, in the absence of any other evidence, will the police respond to a light coming on?’
You may be thinking that I have been rather negative about lighting, but that is not the case. It’s just that some security measures have their limitations and lighting is one of them. Clearly there are lots of benefits to be had from outside lights, but from a security viewpoint it is probably limited to enhancing our feelings of safety, helping us investigate an incident outside the house, dealing with callers at the door and lighting up places that are in full view of the street and our neighbours in the hope that the illuminated criminal will be deterred. Therefore it is important that we do install lights in the right places and that they are controlled in the right way.
Next time I shall be looking at internal lighting for the home.
Domestic Security Lighting: http://thecrimepreventionwebsite.com/gardens-lighting-access-and-alarms/495/security-lighting/
