Extra police will be deployed on the streets of Brighton during full moons
after officers linked levels of violent crime and the lunar cycle.
Sussex Police said research by the force into factors which influenced
people’s behaviour found a correlation between violent and unruly incidents
and full moons, with a rise in aggressive behaviour in pubs and nightclubs
in the south coast resort. A Sussex Police spokeswoman said more officers
would be assigned to street patrol duties during full moons over the summer
months.
Inspector Andy Parr said: “I compared a graph of full moons and a graph of
last year’s violent crimes and there is a trend. People tend to be more
aggressive.”
The link between full moons and extremes in human behaviour has been
identified in past scientific studies. Professor Michal Zimecki, of the
Polish Academy of Sciences, analysed dozens of studies that take lunar
activity into account, and argued that a full moon could affect criminal
activity and health. One such piece of research, a three-month psychological
study of 1,200 inmates at Armley jail, Leeds, in 1998, found a marked
increase in violent incidents during the first and last quarter of each
lunar month.
But despite the wealth of evidence suggesting a link, no one has been able
to explain it. Some believe that as humans are mostly made of water, the
lunar gravity pulls us just as it does the sea.
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