Not only are college campuses safer than they used to be but they also have less crime than the country at large does, according to a report released last week by the U.S. Department of Justice.</p>
<p>The report, “Campus Law Enforcement 2004-5,” updates one that the department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics published more than a decade ago, using data from the 1994-95 academic year.</p>
<p>Over the 10-year span, the new report says, violent crimes on college campuses decreased by 9 percent, to 62 per 100,000 students in 2004. Private campuses reported twice as many violent crimes per student as public institutions did. But nationally, the rate was far higher: 466 violent crimes per 100,000 residents.</p>
<p>Property crimes on college campuses also declined—by 30 percent, to 1,625 per 100,000 students in 2004—according to the report. Private colleges also reported a higher rate of property crimes than their public counterparts did, but the levels at both fell short of the national rate, 3,517 per 100,000 residents, the report says.</p>
<p>Its campus crime statistics come from the Education Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as the Justice Department’s own survey data. That department polled 750 four-year institutions with enrollments of at least 2,500 students and 163 two-year institutions with enrollments of more than 10,000, yielding data from more than 80 percent of each group.</p>
<p>Level of Preparation</p>
<p>Campus law-enforcement agencies are better prepared and equipped now than they were a decade ago, according to the report, which focuses more on those agencies than it does on crime data. Its findings reflect a continuing trend toward the professionalization of campus officers.</p>
<p>“These are not second-class police,” said Jeffrey S. Jacobson, a lawyer in New York who specializes in campus law enforcement.</p>
<p>Three-quarters of campus agencies at four-year institutions employed sworn police officers—as opposed to security guards—and two thirds of all agencies at four-year colleges were armed in 2004-5, the report says. Among agencies that responded to both the 1994-5 survey and the new one, the proportion of sworn officers rose slightly, by one percentage point, and the percentage of armed officers increased by six points.</p>
<p>But more campus agencies are now armed than the report’s three-year-old data indicate. In the past year several institutions, including the University of Iowa and Worcester State College, have opted to arm their officers.</p>
<p>According to the report, nine in 10 sworn campus police forces had armed officers, and only one in 10 public-safety agencies did. One in five campus law-enforcement agencies authorized sworn officers to use Tasers and similar devices, it found, while one in four equipped unsworn officers with Tasers. These data are also for four-year institutions; the report includes two-year colleges only in its appendix.</p>
<p>Campus law-enforcement agencies employing sworn officers screened new hires more thoroughly than other agencies did. They almost always used criminal- and driving-record checks and sometimes incorporated psychological evaluations and aptitude tests, according to the report. Colleges’ agencies were more likely than municipal police forces to require officers to have a college degree and to evaluate recruits’ community-relations skills.</p>
<p>Across the country, the average campus law-enforcement agency had 34 full-time employees, or 3.8 for every 1,000 students, the report found. Where there were sworn officers, campuses had, on average, 2.3 per 1,000 students. Both of those measures were higher at private institutions, according to the report.</p>
<p>Howard University had the greatest number of full-time sworn officers, 166, of any institution surveyed. Temple University and the University of Pennsylvania each had 100 or more. New York University had the largest staff, 345, of any institution included in the report, but its officers were unsworn.</p>
<p>Policies and Profiles</p>
<p>Nearly all campus agencies surveyed—94 percent—had written emergency-preparedness plans, according to the report. But only 58 percent, it says, conducted related exercises in 2004-5.</p>
<p>The report also examines campus law-enforcement agencies’ other emergency-preparedness activities, as well as their written policies (on racial profiling and the use of nonlethal force, for example), community-policing activities (like student ride-along programs and partnerships with citizen groups), and day-to-day responsibilities (like crime investigation and building security).</p>
<p>About 80 percent of sworn campus officers are male and 70 percent are white, according to the report.</p>
<p>The average starting salary for an entry-level officer was $22,300 in an unsworn agency and $30,600 in a sworn one; for a chief it was $61,700 over all. Although the salaries for sworn officers had risen since the last survey, the report found that municipal police forces generally still paid more.