Illinois Campus Crime Trends

Recent news events have focused the public’s attention on campus crime. All colleges and universities are mandated to report crime statistics to the United States Department of Education, Office of Post-Secondary Education under the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistic Act.

When I was executive director of the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority, the research staff started to examine reported statistics submitted in Illinois from 2005-2008 with other data sources, the Illinois State Police Uniform Crime Reporting Program (I-UCR) and the Annual Security Reports provided by each university.

ICJIA recently released its report which can be found on its website at https://www.icjia.org/public/pdf/ResearchReports/Campus_Crime_Report_082011.pdf. This report represents the most comprehensive view possible of incidents of crime reported at Illinois four year institutions of higher learning.

Some facts of note include that the majority of all reported crimes occurred on campus but that more violent crimes were reported on public property adjacent to campus than on campuses themselves. When all of the 6,135 crimes reported during that time period were reviewed, burglaries on campus accounted for 52 percent of reported crimes. Burglaries continued to account for the majority of crimes reported even under I-UCR.

There were some notable consistences as well as some differences in campus crime as reported by the data sources. Homicides and arsons were rare but, alarmingly, sexual assaults on college campuses accounted for almost three times as much of reported campus violent crime than reported in the state generally: sexual assaults accounted for approximately 22 percent of violent crimes reported on campus while only 8 percent of violent offenses in the state as a whole.

Once again, the great research staff at ICJIA should be credited for its excellent work in bringing crime information to the forefront.