ArticlePloS one2024
Does darkness increase the risk of certain types of crime? A registered report protocol.
Article in PloS one, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Does darkness increase the risk of certain types of crime? A registered report article.PloS one · 2025Article
- PHONETIC UNDERPINNINGS OF SOUND SYMBOLISM ACROSS MULTIPLE DOMAINS OF MEANING.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Evidence about the relationship between lighting and crime is mixed. Although a review of evidence found that improved road / street lighting was associated with reductions in crime, these reductions occurred in daylight as well as after dark, suggesting any effect was not due only to changes in visual conditions. One limitation of previous studies is that crime data are reported in aggregate and thus previous analyses were required to make simplifications concerning types of crimes or locations. We will overcome that by working with a UK police force to access records of individual crimes. We will use these data to determine whether the risk of crime at a specific time of day is greater after dark than during daylight. If no difference is found, this would suggest improvements to visual conditions after dark through lighting would have no effect. If however the risk of crime occurring after dark was greater than during daylight, quantifying this effect would provide a measure to assess the potential effectiveness of lighting in reducing crime risk after dark. We will use a case and control approach to analyse ten years of crime data. We will compare counts of crimes in 'case' hours, that are in daylight and darkness at different times of the year, and 'control' hours, that are in daylight throughout the year. From these counts we will calculate odds ratios as a measure of the effect of darkness on risk of crime, using these to answer three questions: 1) Is the risk of overall crime occurring greater after dark than during daylight? 2) Does the risk of crime occurring after dark vary depending on the category of crime? 3) Does the risk of crime occurring after dark vary depending on the geographical area?
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.