Understanding Clery Act Crime Statistics

What Is the Clery Act?

The Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act is a federal law requiring all Title IV colleges and universities to disclose crime statistics and security information. Named after Jeanne Clery, a 19-year-old student murdered in her Lehigh University dormitory in 1986, the law was enacted in 1990 and has been amended several times since.

The law serves a straightforward purpose: students and families deserve standardized, comparable crime data when evaluating institutions. Before the Clery Act, campus crime was largely invisible to prospective students and their families.

What Gets Reported

The Clery Act requires institutions to report specific categories of crimes that occur within defined campus geography:

• Criminal offenses - Murder and non-negligent manslaughter, manslaughter by negligence, rape, fondling, incest, statutory rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, motor vehicle theft, and arson.
• VAWA offenses (added 2013) - Domestic violence, dating violence, and stalking. These were added by the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act amendments.
• Arrests and disciplinary referrals - Liquor law violations, drug law violations, and illegal weapons possession.
• Hate crimes - Any of the above crimes plus larceny-theft, simple assault, intimidation, or vandalism motivated by bias against race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, national origin, disability, gender, or gender identity.

Geographic Boundaries

Clery Act statistics distinguish between several geographic categories, and understanding these is critical for correct interpretation:

• On-campus - Any building or property owned or controlled by the institution within the same reasonably contiguous geographic area and used in direct support of the institution's educational purposes.
• On-campus student housing - A subset of on-campus, covering residential facilities only. Reported separately to highlight dormitory-specific incidents.
• Noncampus property - Property owned or controlled by the institution that is used in direct support of educational purposes but is not within the same reasonably contiguous geographic area. Includes study-abroad locations and satellite campuses.
• Public property - Property within or immediately adjacent to campus that is accessible to the public, such as public streets and sidewalks running through or alongside campus.

Common Misinterpretations

Campus safety data is frequently misunderstood. Here are the most common pitfalls:

Higher numbers do not always mean less safe. A campus with more reported incidents may simply have better reporting infrastructure and a culture that encourages victims to come forward. Underreporting is a well-documented problem across all campuses, the schools that look worst on paper may actually be the most transparent.

The campus that looks worst on paper may simply be the one where victims feel safe enough to report.

Disciplinary referrals are not crimes. Drug and alcohol disciplinary referrals often reflect proactive enforcement by resident advisors and campus security. A high number of referrals can indicate an institution that takes policy violations seriously rather than one with a substance abuse problem.

Zero crimes does not mean zero risk. Very small institutions or campuses in rural areas may report zero incidents in some categories. This does not mean crime is impossible, it means no incidents were reported during the survey period.

Year-to-year changes need context. A single unusual incident can dramatically change a small school's statistics. Always look at multi-year trends rather than reacting to a single year's data. PlainCampus shows historical trends on each school profile to help with this analysis.

How PlainCampus Presents This Data

PlainCampus divides on-campus Criminal Offenses and VAWA reports by enrollment to produce the safety score per 1,000 students. Arrests, disciplinary referrals, and fire records remain visible elsewhere but are excluded from that score. The rate is size-adjusted, not exposure-adjusted, so campus modality and reporting culture still require context. We also rank institutions nationally and within each state, provide year-over-year trend data, and break down reports by category and location type. Every data point traces back to the official OPE Campus Safety Survey filing.