Campus Policing

In response to the homicide of a Lehigh University student in 1986, and as a direct result of tireless campaigning by that victim's family, the U.S. Congress passed the Crime Awareness and Campus Security Act of 1990. The bill mandated institutions of higher education to make both annual crime statistics as well as a comprehensive plan for student safety available to campus constituents upon request. This groundbreaking legislation (along with a number of other bills passed in the years since), coupled with steadily increasing campus crime rates, has led to vast expansions of existing crime prevention programs as well as the implementation of new and innovative responses to incidences of violence by both campus public safety departments and administrators at U.S. colleges and universities. For example, Michigan State University instituted a community policing program in the late 1980s in an effort to reduce increasing rates of property and interpersonal crimes, and the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1991 developed a cooperative initiative with the Chicago Police Department's 12th Precinct to reduce auto theft rates for parts of the city surrounding the UIC campus.

The University of Maryland took a more direct approach in the early 1980s in response to increases in violent crime. The campus increased its number of sworn, armed officers 40%, it implemented checkpoints at campus entrances during evening hours, and fortified the dormitories with heavy-duty security devices (such as stronger locks and shatterproof door glass). These examples lead one to believe that the range and scope of university efforts to address criminal issues are virtually limitless. Indeed, every school has its own unique crime problems that it must address, and the demands placed upon campus police departments can be extreme.

In efforts to ensure the safety of their constituents and spare themselves the potential liability for lax responses to campus criminality, most large colleges and universities have adopted aggressive, proactive strategies to prevent crimes from ever occurring. The issues of potential liability and civil litigation are main reasons for the proliferation of new innovations in campus security. Furthermore, colleges and universities now have the responsibility to alert students about potential risks of on-campus criminality, as well as to provide adequate protection services as advertised. If the school does not live up to its end of this bargain, courts have had no problems assessing monetary penalties against these schools on behalf of crime victims and their families.

Many of these programs or policies are adaptations of strategies used by municipal departments, [Page 41]such as community-or problem-oriented policing. Other schools prefer innovations used by private and industrial security contractors that focus on environment and physical design to reduce the opportunity for offenders to successfully commit an offense. While many of these crime prevention techniques are easily adapted to any given campus, each school must assess and respond to its most pressing security needs. Without doubt, a cooperative, as opposed to an adversarial, relationship between the campus law enforcement body and the constituents of the school must be in place before any program is initiated. A significant part of any needs assessment policy making must include follow-up evaluation of program effectiveness and feasibility.

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