Street Lighting and Crime Reduction in New York City Public Housing, 2016

A 2016 randomized experiment in New York City public housing developments provides evidence on the effect of street lighting on crime. The dataset likely contains crime outcomes for communities assigned temporary streetlights from March through August 2016. The research, authored by Aaron Chalfin, found a minimum 36 percent reduction in nighttime outdoor index crimes associated with the lighting intervention.

Use Cases

• Evaluate the causal impact of street lighting on crime rates based on the randomized experimental design.
• Analyze spatial spillover effects of crime reduction interventions based on the study's methodology.
• Model the relationship between situational environmental changes and nighttime outdoor crimes based on the described index crime metric.

Strengths

• Data is derived from a randomized controlled trial, a strong design for causal inference.
• The study reports a specific, sizable effect size: a minimum 36 percent reduction in crime.
• Focus is on a clearly defined time period (March-August 2016) and geography (NYC public housing).

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The license is listed as closed, which may restrict access and usage.

Provenance

Source

Aaron Chalfin, California University of Pennsylvania

Collection Method

Data likely gathered through a unique public partnership for a randomized field experiment where temporary streetlights were allocated to public housing developments.

Time Range

March through August 2016

Geography

New York City public housing developments