A federal law, the Campus Security Act of 1990, was meant to achieve that goal. All colleges receiving federal financial aid would have to make an annual accounting of crime for their students. But there has been no central library for these so-called campus security reports. And rather than adhering to federal guidelines, the homemade reports of many colleges use state or local definitions to classify crimes. Adding to the confusion, the federal government has changed its rules for what to include in the reports and how to classify crime several times since the law was enacted.
New amendments designed to remedy some of the act's shortcomings take effect next year.
Corporations use different method Corporate America has increasingly paid little or no intention to such politically based crime statistics and, instead, turned to services like the CAP Index to make judgments about security needs. Over the last decade, CAP Index has seen its number of clients rise from a few to almost 2,000, including many Fortune 500 companies. Even the Justice Department itself, which oversees the FBI and has its own Bureau of Justice Statistics, has gone to CAP Index for information. For instance, the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys has used the company's assessments to budget for security at offices along the Atlantic coast from South Carolina to Delaware. Last year, the department asked Congress for funds to do the assessments nationwide.