The Clery Act is a federal law requiring that colleges and universities publish annual statistics on campus crime. The stated intent was to give the public a way of comparing safety (mainly for women concerned about sexual assault, which was turned into a “crisis” during the Obama years) at different schools. How well is this working out?
In today’s Martin Center article, Graham Hillard and Natalia Mayorga look at the latest Clery Act reports by three institutions in the UNC system. They find that the reports are arbitrary and misleading.
Here’s one example. The authors write, “Looking at the raw numbers alone, one might easily conclude that UNC-Chapel Hill experienced a plague of sexual assault in 2021, with particular harm done at its “non-campus” (i.e., off-campus but university-controlled) locations. The truth, told once again in a footnote, is that 20 of the non-campus incidents occurred “over the course of [a single] abusive relationship.” Despicable, yes. But not exactly what the data would seem to indicate to the casual observer.”
College campuses are, on the whole, substantially less prone to crime than most other places in America where people congregate, and schools have strong incentives to minimize crime without the Clery Act. The reports seem to be a mandatory cost with scant benefit.
Hillard and Mayorga conclude, “Are Clery reports designed to mislead? Of course not. Yet their very existence serves a political narrative that needs pushing back against if not outright dismissal. Colleges are not dangerous but safe. We should all celebrate that fact, not run from it.”