In a message dated 2/1/2007 2:36:33 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,  
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

I might  not be getting all the literature, but I can't think of a single
_specific_  crime that has ever been mentioned by UCD apart from the
announcement that  they were improving the soil along the Vladimir Sled
Memorial beds in Clark  Park. 


I believe what she was referring to was things like the $5 MM program  
(funded by Penn but with UCD all over it) to put in new streetlights as an  
over-reaction to a few street crimes right adjacent to campus. A misguided bit  
of 
propaganda, it turns out, because -- as the head of the University's own  
Center 
for Criminology (Lawrence Sherman) pointed out in a published study a few  
years back, evidence is strong that lighting has an effect on the perception of 
 
safety but is lacking on whether it actually deters crime (that is,  some 
studies suggest that it does, others suggest that it doesn't, and a few  even 
suggest that it may serve a facilitating rather than a debilitating  role).
 
What UCD does is jump on instances of crime opportunistically to tout its  
banal, expensive, and somewhat unfounded "safe streets" activities.  

Al  Krigman
Left of Ivan Grozny ®

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