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Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Do Campus Crime Statistics Make You Safer?


Since the early-1990s the Federal government, through the US Department of Education, requires more than 6000 colleges and universities to publish an annual report disclosing their campus security policies and three years of selected crime statistics related to that college or university.

US Department of Education collects this data and makes it available on web sites and in published reports. You can see the data for any particular institution that is required to report. You can sort the data by the size of institutional enrollment, or you can check institutions by states, or by the type of instructional programs they offer.

This is an impressive collection of data but it begs the question of whether or not it actually means anything. It's difficult or impossible to prove a negative but you have to wonder if the millions of man-hours that have been spent in collecting, compiling, and reporting this data has made one college student, anywhere, safer.

Crimes occur in big cities, small cities, and towns and villages everywhere across the globe. It should not surprise anybody to learn then that crimes also occur on college campuses in big cities, small cities, and towns and villages across the globe. As you might expect the statistics reveal that the campuses with the highest crime rates are located in big cities adjacent to areas with the highest crime rates. A small size art oriented college located in Boston always ends up near the top of the "Crimes on Campus" list. A little investigation reveals, however, that the majority of those reported crimes occur in and around a notorious subway station in a high crime area immediately adjacent to campus.

Other writers who have commented on the effectiveness of this data for keeping students safe have pointed out that some schools, particularly some located in major metropolitan areas, have been fined one or more times by the US Department of Education for failing to accurately report on campus crime. The bottom line is that if you are concerned about safety on campus, either for a school which you are thinking of attending, or a school that you currently attend, forget the statistics, do your own investigation, and use your own common sense.

Alcohol and violence go hand-in-hand on college campuses. The Harvard School of Public Health reports that 77% of students who hang around regularly with a binge drinker will either be a victim of or the perpetrator of an assault or a DUI. The old birds of a feather maxim still applies.

Keep your dorm room or your apartment door locked when you are out and when you are inside. Next to bicycle theft burglary seems to be the most common campus crime.

The same rules that apply to urban streets apply to urban college campuses and also to the pastoral rural college campuses. Walk in lighted areas and in a group whenever and wherever you can. Always be aware of your surroundings.




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