Essay

Evaluating a Public Policy Experiment

A city government wants to test if installing brighter streetlights reduces nighttime crime. They select a neighborhood with a historically high crime rate, install the new lights, and observe a 15% drop in crime over the next six months. During the same period, a different neighborhood across the city with a historically low crime rate and no new lights saw its crime rate remain stable. The city officials conclude that the brighter streetlights were directly responsible for the crime reduction. Critically evaluate this conclusion. Identify at least two significant flaws in this approach that make it difficult to establish a clear causal relationship, and for each flaw, suggest a specific improvement to the experimental design.

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Updated 2025-09-24

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