Trends and Issues Update

              Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority 1
College campus crime data in Illinois
By Erica N. Morrow
Vol. 2, No. 1 August 2000
Trends & Issues
UPDATE
Since 1992, the federal Campus
Security Act (now known as the
Jeanne Cleary Disclosure of
Campus Security Policy and Campus
Crime Statistics Act) has mandated the
collection, dissemination, and public
release of campus crime statistics. This
act was in response to parents and
students who were demanding more
information about safety and security
standards and practices on college
campuses. Despite the legislative
mandate and the expectations of
students and their parents, the campus
crime picture remains blurred.
Campus crime data problems
In 1998, less than 5 percent of 8,000
post-secondary institutions participat-ing
in federal student aid programs
voluntarily provided crime statistics to
the Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI). Other institutions reported data
either indirectly or not at all to local or
state police agencies. As a result,
campus crime statistics are difficult to
collate and examine. Many campus
crimes reported and published by
colleges indicate arrests made by the
campus police department, rather than
arrests made by local police on
campus grounds, and may not
accurately reflect the number of
campus crimes that occur.
College and university sexual
assault statistics also may be incom-plete,
as they may not include assaults
reported only to campus housing
officials or counselors. A significant
number of sexual assaults are handled
by on-campus rape crisis centers,
which are not required to report crimes
to campus police departments.
Data sources
Some data can be obtained from the
Chronicle of Higher Education’s
annual sampling of campus crime
statistics, conducted by Critical
Comparisons, Inc. The Chronicle
collects statistics reported by hun-dreds
of schools under the Cleary Act
and attempts to make them readily
available. It should be noted that in
this database many schools only tally
statistics known to campus police,
although they are asked to include
crimes known by other campus
officials. Furthermore, the Chronicle
only includes data from colleges with
5,000 students or more. In addition, the
data is limited in scope to schools who
voluntarily responded to an inquiry.
Some figures may include citations,
which are considered arrests by
campus police.
Many schools are including
campus crime statistics on their Web
sites, but the information is not
consistently presented to the public.
Some schools post only the Index
crimes that occur on their campuses —
ignoring drug, alcohol, and weapons
violations, and hate crimes — while
        
Criminal Justice Information Authority
Figure 1
Reported campus crime trends
0
1,000
2,000
3,000
4,000
5,000
6,000
7,000
8,000
Violent
Index offenses
Property
Index offenses
Total
Index offenses
1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999
Year
Number of reported crimes
Source: Illinois State Police Uniform Crime Reports
(Includes only data from schools that reported directly to Illinois State Police.)