Campus Crime: Difficulties Meeting Federal Reporting Requirements
Released: 1997-03-11T00:00:00

Letter

Background

The Crime Awareness and Campus Security Act of 1990 and its implementing regulations require colleges, as a condition for participating in federal financial aid programs authorized under title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended, to publish and distribute an annual security report that includes statements about campus law enforcement policies, security education and crime prevention programs, alcohol and drug policies, sexual assault education and prevention programs, procedures for reporting sexual assaults, procedures explaining how reports of sexual assaults will be dealt with, and annual statistics on crime incidents. The law also requires colleges to provide timely warning to the campus community about crimes that are considered to represent a threat to other students and employees.

The law requires the collection of data on campus crime, distinct from state or local data, and that information on the incidence of campus crime and of colleges’ security policies and procedures be available. The statistical reporting provision requires colleges to annually compile and report to the campus community statistics on reported crimes, such as murder and robbery, and on arrests for such crimes as liquor law violations.

As the agency administering title IV programs, the Department of Education is responsible for issuing guidance to implement the law, monitoring colleges’ compliance with its requirements, and issuing two reports: a compilation of exemplary campus security practices and a report to the Congress on campus crime statistics. Procedures for monitoring compliance with title IV requirements include program reviews of selected colleges, annual independent audits of all colleges participating in title IV, and compliance reviews in response to complaints received. According to a 1996 publication of the Student Press Law Center, 11 states have laws requiring schools to compile and release statistics on campus crime.

Two bills—H.R. 2416 and S. 2065—introduced in the 104th Congress would have required more detailed and current campus security records to be made accessible to the public. Although a hearing was held in the House, no further action was taken before the session’s end. Had the bills been enacted, they would have applied to colleges with police or security departments and required the colleges, in addition to reporting annual crime statistics, to maintain open-to-the-public, easily understood daily logs that chronologically recorded all crimes against persons or property reported to college campus or security departments. The bills were modeled after a law that has been in effect in Tennessee since 1994.

The Department Has Been Slow to Monitor Compliance and Report to the Congress

Department implementation of the Crime Awareness and Campus Security Act’s reporting requirements has included issuing regulations; disseminating policy guidance to colleges; providing technical assistance to colleges and outreach to campus law enforcement organizations; and, to a limited extent, checking whether colleges have prepared crime statistics reports and what procedures they have used for disseminating the reports. However, because of resource constraints, the Department has only recently expanded its monitoring efforts by initiating program reviews that specifically address compliance with the act’s reporting requirements. Moreover, the Department was late in issuing a required report to the Congress.

Regulatory Guidance Was Issued, and Technical Assistance Was Emphasized

Following enactment of the law in 1990, the Department issued various policy guidance documents on campus security to help colleges meet the law’s requirements, as summarized in table 1. Most of the guidance was issued as Department letters. Final implementing regulations took effect in July 1994.

The Department supplemented its policy guidance with technical assistance provided upon request by its Customer Support Branch. To help colleges achieve compliance, the Department emphasizes providing such assistance, rather than imposing sanctions. Under Department policy, the Secretary imposes sanctions only if a college flagrantly or intentionally violates the regulations or fails to take corrective action when required to do so. Available sanctions include fines or limitation, suspension, or termination of participation in federal financial aid programs. Department officials told us that although the Department and independent auditors had identified violations at 63 colleges since the law’s enactment, as of January 1997, the Department had not imposed sanctions against any college found in noncompliance with campus security requirements.

Monitoring Compliance Has Been Slow, and Some Problems Remain

Although the Department began issuing guidance to colleges on complying with the law in 1991, guidance for monitoring program compliance came much more slowly. The Department did not issue its first program review guidance specifically addressing campus security until September 1996. Until this recent incorporation of campus security in program review guidance, the Department’s program reviewers had not emphasized monitoring campus security reports in their title IV reviews, focusing instead on compliance with other provisions of title IV. Although most of the nearly 2,800 title IV program reviews conducted between September 1992 and May 1996 found noncompliance with some title IV program requirements, only 24 of these reviews identified campus security violations. Department officials told us that monitoring had generally been limited to checking whether colleges published a campus security report and had procedures for its distribution. Since no review guidance for monitoring campus security was available until September 1996, it is unlikely that the reviewers checked whether the reports contained all the required information or whether information was accurate.

Under the new monitoring guidance, program reviewers must check a college’s crime report for all required information and should attempt to evaluate the procedures used to collect crime data. The accuracy of crime statistics need not be verified unless it becomes apparent from a complaint or some other source that the security report may be incomplete or inaccurate. In such cases, the Department is to take appropriate action to ensure compliance, including more thoroughly examining the statistics and, if warranted, taking formal administrative action. As of January 1997, the Department had received five complaints of noncompliance: one precipitated an in-depth campus security compliance review; the other four complaints are still being investigated.

Even with the new guidance, however, program review officials told us that staff are still having some difficulty monitoring compliance. Reasons for the difficulty include reviewers’ limited experience in dealing with law enforcement matters, uncertainties about how to interpret certain definitions of reportable crimes, and differences among campuses that make evaluation difficult under a single set of program review guidelines. In the case of urban campuses, for example, reviewers may have difficulty in determining which facilities are campus related. The difficulties involving definitions and differences among colleges are discussed in more detail later in this report.

The Department has yet to issue guidance for independent auditors who conduct federally required annual audits of all colleges participating in title IV programs. The Department’s June 1995 independent audit guide does not provide guidance to auditors on checking for campus security compliance. As of August 1996, only six audits had documented noncompliance on security matters since the act took effect, and a Department official said that most auditors participating in training sessions held in regional Inspector General offices were unaware of campus security reporting requirements, further suggesting that auditors may not be routinely scrutinizing campus security reports. The Department plans to issue an updated audit guide that will explicitly refer to campus security compliance and instruct auditors to ensure that campus security reports are prepared and distributed according to federal requirements. A Department official responsible for writing the audit guide expects it to be issued some time in 1997.

Required Report to the Congress Was Late

Although the Department issued a required report on exemplary campus security practices in September 1994, the Department was more than 1 year late in issuing a report on campus crime statistics to the Congress. The law required the Department to review campus crime statistics and issue a report to the Congress by September 1, 1995. Citing limited resources to perform such a review, the Department postponed issuing the report until February 1997.

As the basis for the report, the Department conducted a national survey on campus crime and security. A representative sample of 1,500 colleges was surveyed to establish baseline information on crime statistics by such attributes as type of school (such as 4-year public or 2-year private), nature of the campus (such as urban or rural and residential or commuter), and types of public safety employees providing campus security. Having compiled and reported the survey results, the Department plans to evaluate whether additional actions are needed at the federal level.

Colleges Are Having Difficulty Applying Regulatory Criteria and Are Not Reporting Uniformly

Our review of selected colleges’ campus security reports and our interviews with selected campus officials indicate that colleges are having difficulty applying some of the law’s reporting requirements. As a result, colleges are not reporting data uniformly. Of the 25 reports we reviewed, only 2 provided information in all the prescribed categories. Table 2 summarizes the principal problems colleges are having.

Excluding Crimes Reported to Campus Officials Other Than Law Enforcement Officials

Campus law enforcement officials differ as to whether their reported statistics must include crimes reported to them by other campus authorities without information identifying the persons involved in the reported incidents. For example, according to comments the Department received during rulemaking, students are sometimes more comfortable reporting incidents—particularly sex-related offenses—through academic rather than law enforcement channels.

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) generally prohibits the disclosure of education records or information from education records, which originally included personally identifiable details on crime incidents. As a result of a 1992 amendment to FERPA, however, reports of incidents maintained by campus law enforcement officials for law enforcement purposes are not now classified as education information and, therefore, may be disclosed. Even incidents reported to campus authorities other than law enforcement officials may be included in the campus crime statistics as long as information identifying the persons involved is not disclosed. But reporting such incidents in the statistics is not required under a Department interpretation of the Crime Awareness and Campus Security Act. According to that interpretation, colleges may exclude from their statistics those incidents that campus law enforcement officials cannot validate because, for example, the parties’ names were not disclosed.

The fact that the incidents need not be reported is reflected by variations in campus security reports, as some reports excluded information from non-law-enforcement sources for which no personally identifiable information was provided. Our review of 25 reports prepared by colleges showed that some of the data may have been incomplete or incompatible because of differences in safety officials’ access to information, insistence on verifiable data, or both. Six reports showed direct and varied attempts to address these differences—for example, by supplementing required crime categories with explanatory subcategories, adding a column showing incidents reported to other officials, or adding footnotes. When we asked campus law enforcement officials at the 25 colleges how they treated such cases, we found an even greater variation in their responses than in the reports. For example, nine said their numbers included incidents reported to campus officials who were not law enforcement officials without any notation to that effect, and four said their numbers excluded incidents they could not verify. Some were concerned about reporting incidents for which no details were provided because, without details on specific cases, they were unable to verify that a crime had occurred, had been properly classified, or had been counted only once—if, for example, a crime had been reported to more than one office. At some colleges, security officials do not receive even unverifiable statistics from counselors: Officials at five colleges said counselors are not required to or generally do not report incidents to them, and the general counsel of one state’s higher education organization concurred in that interpretation.

Using the Wrong Categories in Reporting Sex-Related Offenses and Murder

Although colleges’ statistical reports included most of the prescribed criminal reporting categories, reporting officials appeared to have difficulty principally with two categories: sex offenses and murder.

In 60 percent of the reports we reviewed, colleges had difficulty complying with the reporting requirement for sex-related offenses. Colleges are required to report statistics on sexual offenses; they are not required to distinguish between forcible and nonforcible offenses. Of the reports we reviewed, 15 incorrectly categorized offenses. For example, several colleges listed incidents as “rape” or “attempted rape,” both of which are less inclusive than the term “forcible sexual offense.”

We also noted a discrepancy in how colleges reported the number of murders. Seven of the reports we reviewed labeled incidents resulting in death as homicides, but the law requires the term “murders.” According to the Uniform Crime Reporting Handbook, homicide can also include killings that result from negligence, whereas murder refers to willful killings. Because homicide is not as specific a term, the use of this broader category could obscure the actual number of murders.

Omitting Hate Crimes

The Department’s regulations for the Crime Awareness and Campus Security Act require colleges to report statistics on murders, forcible rapes, and aggravated assaults that manifest evidence of prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity, as defined in the Hate Crimes Statistics Act. However, of the reports we reviewed, only five included this information. Eleven of the 16 officials we asked about the omission told us they were unaware of the requirement, which was not mentioned in the Department’s letters explaining the statistical reporting requirements. Another two said they lacked direction on how to report these crimes.

Excluding Information on Crimes Reported to Local Police

Although the Crime Awareness and Campus Security Act requires that crime statistics include on-campus occurrences reported to local police, our interviews with college officials and review of their statistical reports suggest that colleges vary in their inclusion of incidents reported to local police. Of the 25 reports we reviewed, 1 specifically stated that it did not include incidents reported to local police, and a second stated that it included such incidents when available. In contrast, six reports indicated that incidents reported to local police were included. According to a law enforcement official we contacted and our analysis of a Department program review, reporting such incidents can be difficult. For example, record systems of some local police departments do not lend themselves to converting the incidents to the categories required for campus security reports. Moreover, identifying incidents at college-related facilities can be a problem when a campus is dispersed throughout a large urban area.

Using Arrest Data for Three Reporting Categories

For three crime categories—liquor, drug, and weapons possession violations—the law requires statistics on the number of arrests, rather than on the number of reported crimes. For these categories, uniformity of statistics can be affected to some degree by school policies and type of authority of the campus security department. For example, one campus security report we reviewed contained a footnote to the effect that liquor-law violations were frequently adjudicated through campus judicial procedures and, therefore, would not be included in the arrest statistics. Three law enforcement officials told us that offenses are less likely to result in arrests on campuses that do not have security departments with the power to make arrests.

States’ Open Campus Crime Record Laws’ Provisions Vary

We identified eight states that require public access to campus police or security department records on reported crimes: California, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. In all but Minnesota, the laws in general apply to all institutions of higher education, public and private. Minnesota’s law applies only to public colleges.

Three of the eight states (Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee) have laws specifically requiring campus safety authorities to maintain daily logs open to public inspection. The remaining five, while not prescribing the log format, require disclosure of information similar to that required to be kept in the logs.

Certain provisions are common to a number of these state laws. For example, they generally contain a provision exempting disclosure that is otherwise prohibited by law. Many prohibit publication of the names of victims or of victims of sex-related crimes. Many also include some type of provision protecting witnesses, informants, or information that might jeopardize an ongoing investigation. Several law enforcement officials emphasized to us the importance of including such a provision.

The laws also differ in a number of other respects, such as the following:

California, Pennsylvania, and Oklahoma specifically provide for penalties for noncompliance; the other states do not specify penalties.

Only California includes a specific reference to occurrences involving hate; in fact, California’s law requires inclusion of noncriminal hate-related incidents.

For more information on the eight laws, see appendix II.

We also agreed to determine whether any legal challenges had been raised to state open campus crime log laws and whether the effectiveness of such laws had been studied. We did not find any reported cases challenging these laws or any studies of their positive or negative effects.

In addition, according to the Student Press Law Center’s Covering Campus Crime: A Handbook for Journalists, all 50 states have open records or “sunshine” laws, most of which require public institutions’ records to be open to the public unless they are specifically exempted. Generally, public colleges are covered by those laws. For example, Colorado’s open records law declares that it is public policy that all state records be open for inspection, including all writings made, maintained, or kept by the state or any agency or institution—which would include state colleges. These laws generally provide that if records are kept, they must be open; the laws are not intended to impose a new recordkeeping requirement.

Conclusions

The consistency and completeness of campus crime reporting envisioned under the act have been difficult to attain for two primary reasons. First, the differing characteristics of colleges—such as their location in an urban or other setting or the extent to which complaints may be handled through campus governance rather than through police channels—affect the colleges’ ability to provide a complete and consistent picture of incidents that occur on their campuses. Second, some confusion exists about reporting requirements, particularly about how certain categories of crimes are to be classified.

The Department originally relied mostly on its regulations, letters to colleges, and technical assistance to implement the Crime Awareness and Campus Security Act. Its continued efforts in providing technical assistance to school officials, as well as its recent issuance of monitoring guidance to Department officials and its current work to update audit guidelines for independent auditors, may achieve more consistent reporting and compliance with the law by colleges. For example, these efforts may improve consistency in categories used and type of crimes reported. However, inherent differences among colleges will be a long-term obstacle to achieving comparable, comprehensive campus crime statistics. Although a federal open crime log law could offer more timely access to information on campus crime and a means of verifying the accuracy of schools’ statistical reports, such logs would continue to reflect the inherent differences among colleges apparent in the summary statistics currently required by the act. For example, such logs might not include off-campus incidents or, without an amendment to FERPA, incidents that students report through non-law-enforcement channels.

Agency Comments

On February 12, 1997, the Department of Education provided comments on a draft of this report (see app. III). The Department generally agreed with our basic conclusions and provided us a number of technical comments, which we incorporated as appropriate.

We are sending copies of this report to the Secretary of Education, appropriate congressional committees, and other interested parties. Please call me at (202) 512-7014 or Joseph J. Eglin, Jr., Assistant Director, at (202) 512-7009 if you or your staff have any questions about this report. Other staff who contributed to this report are listed in appendix IV.

Scope and Methodology

To determine the actions the Department of Education has taken to implement and monitor compliance with the Crime Awareness and Campus Security Act, we interviewed officials at the Department’s headquarters and regional offices and analyzed pertinent regulations, policy guidance, and other documents. To identify difficulties colleges were having in complying with the act, we interviewed officials at 27 colleges selected from a judgmental sample of colleges from the following four groups.

Members of the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators (IACLEA)—Ten Colleges. Our initial college law enforcement contact was the Director of Police at the University of Delaware, also a past president of IACLEA and a recognized authority on the Crime Awareness and Campus Security Act. He provided us with the names of chief law enforcement officials at eight IACLEA member colleges, one in each of the eight states with open campus police log laws. These officials, in turn, referred us to two additional member colleges.

Non-IACLEA Members in States With Open Log Laws—Eight Colleges. Using a list of non-IACLEA colleges provided by IACLEA, we selected six 4-year and two 2-year colleges representing all eight states with open log laws and spoke to their heads of campus security. All eight colleges had an enrollment exceeding 1,000 students.

Colleges in States Without Open Log Laws—Seven Colleges. From a universe of colleges representing all states, we randomly selected colleges, with enrollments exceeding 1,000 students, that participated in title IV programs from the Department’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, stratified by type of college (such as 4-year private or 2-year public) and geographic region. The chiefs of campus security at these seven colleges composed the third group of officials interviewed.

Colleges Involved in Complaints About Crime Statistics—Two Colleges. We included two other colleges for information on complaints regarding crime statistics. We included the first of these because a complaint had been lodged against that college. We included the second college because it was subject to the same state crime reporting system as another college—the only one that has undergone an in-depth Department review as a result of a crime statistic complaint.

In addition, we asked the campus security officials interviewed to send us a copy of their most recent campus security statistics. We received statistical reports from 25 colleges and evaluated them to determine the extent to which the reports conformed to crime reporting requirements prescribed in the act. We did not trace the numbers to source documents to check their accuracy or completeness. We also searched the literature and reported case law to determine whether any studies had been done on the effects of or legal challenges to state open log laws. We analyzed state statutes and spoke with representatives of campus safety and other interest groups as well as faculty specializing in criminal justice.

We performed our work between June 1996 and January 1997 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards.

Provisions of State Open Campus Crime Record Laws

Names and addresses of arrested persons and charges against them Exempts from disclosure incidents involving certain types of handicapped persons, which are to be separately maintained (continued)

Public and private campuses (under the state’s Campus Security Act, private colleges’ police departments are public agencies for the limited purpose of crime enforcement)

Records must be open, if kept; the intent is not to impose a new recordkeeping requirement (continued)

Names and addresses of persons arrested Information specifically not required unless otherwise provided by law: names of persons reporting, victims, witnesses, or uncharged suspects or other information related to investigation (continued)

Identification required is not specified.

Information may be withheld upon certification of need to protect the investigation, but in no event after the arrest.

Comments From the Department of Education

GAO Contacts and Staff Acknowledgments

GAO Contacts

Acknowledgments

The following staff made significant contributions to this report: Meeta Sharma, Senior Evaluator; Stanley G. Stenersen, Senior Evaluator; and Roger J. Thomas, Senior Attorney.

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