September 9, 2025
Streetlight Study Debunks a Popular Claim
Study finds no evidence that 78,000 retrofitted white-light LED streetlights reduced crime
When Leeds City Council in the U.K. replaced nearly 80,000 streetlights with white-light LEDs between 2005 and 2013, it wasn’t just a modernization project, it was a promise. City officials claimed the new lighting would cut night-time crime by 20%, a projection used to help secure substantial government financing under a Private Finance Initiative.
But a new study published in Applied Spatial Analysis and Policy offers a clear verdict: the crime reduction never happened.
Researchers Paul Marchant and Paul Norman analyzed weekly police-recorded crimes (PRCs) over nine years across 107 neighborhoods, using sophisticated multilevel statistical modeling. Their findings? Crime rates stayed flat—if anything, they edged slightly upward.
The study’s headline result: a 2% increase in darkness-adjusted crime, with a 95% confidence interval ranging from –3% to +7%. That’s a null result—no statistically significant change. Unadjusted night-time crime rose an estimated 3%, and total 24-hour crime rose by roughly the same amount.
These findings directly contradict the assumptions made in Leeds’ original business case, which projected £109 million ($148 million USD) in crime-related benefits from the relighting program.
Debunking a Popular Claim
This is not the first study to challenge the idea that better lighting leads to less crime, but it may be the most comprehensive. Unlike earlier before-after studies that compared only a handful of locations, the Leeds analysis tracked nearly half a million crimes where lighting conditions were known, over 456 consecutive weeks. Crucially, the relighting was not targeted to high-crime areas, reducing the risk of skewed results.
The research accounted for overdispersion in crime data, seasonal effects, and even changes in daylight hours. The authors also ran multiple model types to test the robustness of their results. The outcome was consistent: no detectable crime reduction from switching to white-light LEDs.
Implications for the Industry
For many lighting people, this study presents new insights. While white-light LEDs offer real benefits in energy savings, visibility, and maintenance, the claim that they reduce crime remains largely unsupported by rigorous evidence.
The Leeds findings align with the UK’s NIHR-funded LANTERNS project, which also found no significant link between lighting upgrades and crime reduction. By contrast, a high-profile New York study by Chalfin et al. did find reductions, but it used extremely bright temporary floodlights—not standard streetlights.
The message for municipalities and lighting people: be careful what benefits you promise. Lighting may improve streetscapes and visibility, but if crime reduction is your primary metric of success, the data suggest you might be chasing a mirage.
