The following appeared in a recommendation from the President of the Amburg Chamber of Commerce Last October the city of Belleville installed high intensity lighting in its central business district and vandalism there declined almost immediately The

The president of the Amburg Chamber of Commerce presents a relatively sound recommendation, at first glance, in order to reduce crime rates in Amburg. However, the president does not recognize all essential elements to evaluate its own position, there are stll some questions need to be answered, or the recommendation could be significantly weaklended.

The first question is about must there be a connection between installing high-intensity lighting and vandalism decline? We can adduce that the high-intensity lighting can make central business district brighter than before in evening and night. But vandalism not only happens in that period. In order to clarify this question, the president should provide more information about vandalism in Belleville central business district, if the information shows that there are more vandalism happening in evening or night, then the high-lntensity lighting could be useful. Besides this, there is another point needs to be considered, that is whether the local laws or policies have changed after installing. If local governments have changed laws, for example, laws that punish vandalism more severely, or new policies have arranged more polices in central business district, then the vandalism could also be affected a lot, the president should collect more data in order to emphasis this question.

In addition, I cast doubt on Amburg’s policy, how can the president assert that the policy is bootless? The president mentions that after instituting police patrols on bicycles in its business district, the vandalism remains constant. But we cannot conclude that the policy is ineffective, because we do not the vandalism trends in Amburg’s business district. If the trends have increased for several months, and after instituting the policy, the trends are stifled, then the policy is helpful. And in order to decrease the vandalism, maybe the local governments could try some methods to enhance the policy like make police using motorbike or even cars rather than use the money that is being spent on bicycle to install lighting. The efficiency of the patrols can be significantly developed. If the president cannot make this point clear and give a convincible answer, then the argument could be problematic.

Last but not the least, even the high-intensity lighting is useful, and the policy is bootless, can Amburg simply replicate the success again? We should acknowledge that the environments are different in these two cities. If the vandalism is greater in Amburg than in Belleville, it is easy for Belleville to control the vandalism and Belleville will surely get a better result. When it comes to Amburg, if there is a about ten folds of vandalism to Belleville, and local criminals are not afraid of the governments, in an extreme case, for example, they dare to rob on streets even during daytime, then even high-intensity lighting cannot prevent them from robbing in evening. The situation will not be improved. In such case, the only thing local governments can do is spending more money on police forces and make a more complete laws to punish criminals. The president should find some evidence that can support the view that this method could be reproduced in Amburg.

We should admit that the president’s recommendation is reasonable in some ways, but questions above must be answered. If one of them cannot be solved perfectly, the recommendation could be wrong, not to mention that all of them could be problematic if there are no accurate answers. The presidents should take account for them seriously.