Incidents of burglary, motor vehicle theft, arson, drug arrests and referrals and forcible sex offenses have decreased over the past three years, according to Public Safety’s 2004 Uniform Campus Crime Report. Reports of larceny and liquor-law arrests, however, have risen slightly.
Available on the Public Safety website, the report highlights three-year trends in various criminal activities in and around campus. It also provides a ‘crime rate,’ a juxtaposition of the incidence of crime against the University population.
The highest crime rate is .066, or 6.6 percent, for 259 acts of larceny committed last year, up from 216 incidents in 2003. While larceny in residential facilities remains high, the report notes that larceny is increasingly committed on public property around the campus. The proportion of larceny committed on public property went up sharply from 2003, while in the same time period larceny reported in residential facilities declined to a three-year low of 53 acts.
“We are not required by law to report the larcenies,” said Director of Public Safety Maryanne Wiggin. “But because it is the largest crime going on statistically on campus, we think it is important to let community members know.”
Theft in particular remains the crime committed most often at the University, although certain kinds of theft have decreased in occurrence. After reaching a peak of 77 incidents reported in 2003, burglary has declined to 45 cases in 2004, slightly lower than in 2002. Motor vehicle theft plummeted to zero reported incidents last year, down four from three years ago. Wiggin attributes the drops in criminal acts to increased vigilance, also noting that dormitories have become safer with the installation of card access systems.
“Last year, we added three new [Public Safety] positions,” Wiggin said. “And card access is a wonderful thing.”
More violent crimes, like forcible sex offenses and arson, have declined in the past three years as well. The exception was aggravated assault, which saw its only three reports in 2004, and robbery, which increased to five incidents in 2004 after falling to a low of just one in 2003.
Referrals and arrests in the case of substance abuse are declining, with the exception of liquor-law arrests, which rose from six to seven arrests in 2004. Liquor-law referrals remain far higher than drug referrals, with 195 people referred in 2004 for liquor violations, compared with only nine people referred the same year for drug use. The rate is down from its peak of 22 drug referrals in 2003. Likewise, drug arrests have fallen to three last year after peaking at six during the previous year.
The overwhelming majority of liquor and drug referrals have taken place in dormitories and residential facilities. Unlike previous years, when students were arrested in residential facilities on drug charges, no liquor or drug-related arrests took place on campus last year.
The report is released annually in accordance with the Jeanne Clery Act, a federal law requiring public and private universities that receive financial aid from the federal government to provide statistics on campus crime and safety information to the university community. It is named in the memory of Jeanne Clery, a student who was raped and murdered while she slept in her campus room in 1986. The legislation was enacted by Congress in 1990 under pressure from the parents of Clery and other student crime victims.
Leave a Reply