Arson is a Clery Act reportable offense category - willful burning of property.. Across the 3-year reporting window from 2022 to 2024, US colleges and universities cumulatively reported 1,837 arson incidents on-campus. The most recent year on record (2024) shows 628 incidents, reported by 313 of the 5,585 institutions in the survey, an average of 2.01 among the institutions that reported any. Year-over-year, arson reporting fell by 6.7% - a signal that should be read alongside reporting-practice changes, not only real-world incidence.
Crime record / national series 2024 Clery survey
Federal campus-safety record
Arson on campus
National reporting patterns for arson across 5,585 U.S. colleges and universities.
reported incidents 628 2024 national total
313 campuses reported at least one
94.4% of surveyed campuses reported none
-6.7% latest year-over-year change
Offense plate
Sheet CRIME-ARSON · Arson 2024 · 313 reporters
TIER-MID · SIL-HIGH · TRD-PEAK · GEO-REG · GRP-CRIM · INC-TOT · YR-2024 · SRC-OPE
- TIER-MID Mid footprint
- SIL-HIGH 94.4% zero
- TRD-PEAK Peaked
- GEO-REG Regional
- GRP-CRIM #7 in group
- INC-TOT 628
- YR-2024 2024
- SRC-OPE OPE Clery
Offense plate for Arson: reporting tier, zero-reporting share, trend shape, geographic breadth, and Clery group rank. Every stamp is derived from this offence's federal extract, not portal boilerplate.
628 arson incidents reported on U.S. campuses in 2024
According to U.S. Department of Education Clery Act filings, U.S. colleges reported 628 on-campus arson incidents in 2024, from 313 of 5,585 surveyed institutions, a 6.7% fall versus the prior year. University of California-Santa Barbara leads the named campus list with 19 incidents. These are filed reports, not a personal risk forecast, and zeros are common for many offence types.
Data source U.S. Department of Education, OPE Campus Safety and Security Survey
- 2024 national total
- 628
- Campuses reporting ≥1
- 313
- Surveyed campuses with zero
- 94.4%
- Year-over-year change
- -6.7%
Which campuses filed arson reports (2024)
Of 5,585 Clery-surveyed institutions, how many recorded at least one on-campus arson incident versus zero.
- ≥1 filed 313
Campuses reporting at least one arson incident
313 campuses
- Zero
Campuses reporting zero arson incidents
5,272 campuses
What this shows 313 of 5,585 surveyed campuses (5.6%) filed at least one arson incident in 2024; 5,272 (94.4%) reported none. A zero is the ordinary case for this offence, not evidence that a campus is safer than one that filed.
Arson briefing
What the arson national total does, and does not, show
The peak year for arson reporting was 2023 with 673 incidents. An average of 304 institutions recorded at least one such incident each year across the reporting window. The single institution with the most reported arson incidents in 2024 is University of California-Santa Barbara in Santa Barbara, CA with 19 incidents (3% of the national total). 5,272 of the 5,585 surveyed institutions (94.4%) recorded no arson at all in 2024, so a zero is the ordinary case for this offence rather than a distinguishing result. At that rate a zero is very nearly the universal answer, so it cannot distinguish institutions at all; only a non-zero count is informative for this offence, and even one incident places a campus in a small minority.
Within criminal offenses reported in 2024, arson is the 7th most-reported of 11 offences, at 1.9% of the group's 33,224 incidents. Reporting is widely distributed: the single highest-reporting institution accounts for 3% of the 2024 national total, so no one campus drives this figure. No campus accounts for more than 3% of the 2024 total, so the order below tracks institution size as much as anything else: these are raw incident counts, not per-student rates, and a large university can lead the table without being less safe than a small one.
Reporting is geographically partial: only 45 states and territories recorded a arson incident at all in 2024, with CA alone accounting for 23.9% of them. A state missing from that list has not been shown to be safer; it recorded nothing, which is a different claim. The counts cover on-campus locations only, noncampus and public-property incidents being separate Clery Act categories.
The peak is behind the latest year
Arson reporting did not move in one direction across this window. It reached 673 incidents in 2023 and stood at 628 in 2024, so the most recent figure is below the window's high rather than at it. Reading only the latest year against the earliest would hide that turn.
The survey population was unchanged across the window at 5,585 institutions, so the shape is not produced by schools entering or leaving the dataset. Among institutions that reported at least one incident, the average moved from 1.9 to 2.0.
Arson reporting window
Arson year-by-year trend
2022 536
2023 673
2024 628
| Year | Total Incidents | Schools Reporting ≥1 | Surveyed | Avg Among Reporters |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 536 | 283 | 5,585 | 1.89 |
| 2023 | 673 | 315 | 5,585 | 2.14 |
| 2024 | 628 | 313 | 5,585 | 2.01 |
Source: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Postsecondary Education Clery Act Campus Safety Survey · 2024 National trend for Arson. Counts cover on-campus incidents; 313 of 5,585 surveyed institutions reported at least one in 2024.
Arson: campuses with the most reports (2024)
A long tail, not a three-campus story
The first three rows contribute only 8% of reported arson incidents. Even all 20 campuses shown here account for 27.2%, leaving most of the national total outside this table. Use these rows as examples from a broad reporting footprint, not as institutions that explain the national pattern. The leading trio are University of California-Santa Barbara, Indiana University-Indianapolis and University of California-Berkeley.
The long tail contains 578 incidents across 310 other reporting campuses. That base, rather than the podium, carries the national figure.