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Clery Act

The Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act, commonly called the Clery Act, is a federal law enacted in 1990 for the purpose of providing college and university students with important information about campus crime and security policies at the higher education institutions they attend. This entry reviews the purpose and provisions of the act and the amendments to it as well as the limited litigation that has dealt with it.

Purposes of the Clery Act

As one scholarly commentary described the Clery Act, the law's main goal

was to ensure that when selecting an [institution of higher education] to attend, current and prospective students, as well as their parents, would be able to obtain accurate “official” statistics about how much crime had occurred on a respective [college or university] campus.

In addition, students and their parents “could gain knowledge of the security procedures that each school had in place. This information would then allow students and their parents to weigh crime issues when making college enrollment decisions” (Fisher, Hartman, Cullen, & Turner, 2002, pp. 63–64).

All postsecondary institutions that participate in federal student aid programs are required to comply with the Clery Act. The law's passage was due in large part to the efforts of Howard and Connie Clery, whose daughter Jeanne was raped and murdered in her dormitory room at Lehigh University in 1986. Originally titled the Crime Awareness and Campus Security Act of 1990, the law was renamed in 1998 to commemorate Jeanne Clery.

Provisions of the Act

Under the law, officials at higher education institutions are required to collect and publish crime statistics pertaining to certain types of crime that occur on campus and in adjacent areas and noncampus buildings, including fraternity and sorority houses. Specifically, officials are required to report annually about crime activity that occurred during the preceding calendar year and the two preceding calendar years.

The Clery Act lists the following crimes or campus disciplinary offenses that are covered by the law's reporting provisions: murder, forcible and nonforcible sex offenses, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, motor vehicle theft, manslaughter, arson, and “arrests or persons referred for campus disciplinary action for liquor law violations, drug-related violations, and weapons possession” (20 U.S.C. § 1092(f)(1)(F)(i)). Institutional officials are also required to collect and disseminate information about hate crimes that result in bodily injury if “the victim is intentionally selected because of the actual or perceived race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or disability” (20 U.S.C. § 1092(f)(1)(F)(ii)).

As originally enacted, the Clery Act required only that officials at colleges and universities report crimes that occurred on their own campuses. However, the law was subsequently amended to require officials to report crimes that occur in certain noncampus buildings or on noncampus property as well as crimes that take place in certain public areas that are adjacent to a reporting institution. The law defines “noncampus building or property” as meaning “any building or property owned or controlled by a student organization recognized by the institution,” as well as

any building or property … owned or controlled by [the institution] that is used in direct support of, or in relation to, the institution's educational purposes, is used by students, and is not within the same reasonably contiguous geographic area of the institution. (20 U.S.C. §

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