With crime-reporting requirements growing in complexity, college security forces are moving to automate their annual Clery Act filings.
Following a spate of well-publicized crimes on university campuses, schools are coming under increased pressure to improve their reporting under the Jeanne Clery Act.
Passed in 1990 following the rape and murder of a freshman at Lehigh University, the act requires all higher education institutions that participate in federal financial-aid programs to publish an annual report detailing campus crimes.
Currently, a lot of schools are falling short, and the Department of Education is losing patience. In 2013, DOE issued $1.4 million in fines, almost equal to the amount levied in the previous 22 years combined.
While one study has suggested that some universities are deliberately underreporting campus crimes, the majority of schools seem to be failing for another reason: They cannot keep pace with the rapid changes and growing complexity of the reporting requirements.
“It’s not because schools are dragging their feet,” said Tim Fox, director of public safety at Loyola University Maryland. “It’s just that there are multiple layers: Some of the guidance from the Department of Justice and DOE has been changing. It hasn’t been easy to keep up with those pieces, especially from the standpoint of reporting and inspections.”
(Next page: The resources need to juggle more regulations than ever)
Daily and Clery Reporting
Between Title IX, the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), and changes to Clery, Fox’s department now juggles more policies and regulations than ever. “We have about 65 policies in our annual security and fire report,” said Fox. “Add the VAWA, Title IX, and what came into play this year with Clery, it’s about 110 different policies. Making sure we have the resources to handle all this is a challenge.”
In an effort to meet the school’s obligations more efficiently and accurately, Loyola Maryland recently implemented NaviGate Incidents, a cloud-based solution that simplifies incident reporting and automatically generates both the daily crime log and the annual Clery Act filing. (The 2014 Clery Act report will be Loyola Maryland’s first using the new system.)
To file an incident report using the new program, campus security officers use a series of pull-down menus rather than having to type everything in. “The dropdown windows do make it easier, and they keep all the information consistent because officers are not inputting categories themselves,” explained Ken Ziegler, coordinating trainer for support operations at Loyola Maryland. “On some of the older systems, you could type in a different crime category and it might accept it.”
Additional details about an incident can be typed into a narrative box that can also be queried, but the drop-down menus serve as an almost foolproof way to ensure that Clery Act crimes—as well as other incidents—are accurately reported.
“One of our largest challenges was to make sure that the reportable elements are collected and categorized so they’re accurate when we run our Clery data report,” said Fox. “For the Clery crimes, we try to use the same categories in the drop-down menus that Clery uses.”
Recognizing crime severity
Fox, who has 27 years of law-enforcement experience, believes that his 44 special police officers have the experience to recognize the severity of a particular crime, although this may not be true on every campus.
“If you’re a security officer on campus, you might not know what makes something an aggravated assault and what makes something a simple assault, for example,” said Chris Porter, accounts manager at NaviGate Incidents. “Aggravated assault needs to be counted for Clery, whereas simple assault doesn’t.”
Recognizing that not all security officers understand these definitions, NaviGate Incidents allows schools to create an interface where officers use pull-downs and check boxes to describe what occurred instead. “Instead of giving an officer a check box that says ‘aggravated assault,’ for example, we can give them a box that says ‘ assault,’ and then give them check boxes for further criteria,” said Porter.
Behind the scenes, the system then analyzes the various criteria and determines whether it was a Clery crime or not. Whenever Clery Act requirements change, the company incorporates these into the system. “As the new laws come out, we review all those changes,” said Porter. “We will talk to several universities as well to hear their interpretation of the law—it’s a collective effort.”
Although the system does allow officers to file reports from the field using their smartphones, Loyola Maryland currently requires its officers to head to one of several designated areas on campus to input incident reports. “We haven’t launched the mobile application piece,” said Fox. “It was easier for us to do standalone computers than it was to do the automated one either in the control vehicle or via a handheld device.”
Training time is critical
NaviGate Incidents is the fourth reporting system that Loyola Maryland has used, a fact that did elicit some grumbling among the rank and file. “The officers initially were not crazy to hear that a new system was coming—traditionally, cops don’t like change,” said Ziegler. “But I’ve had a lot of them tell me they really like the system and that it’s much better than the last one.”
Ziegler is responsible for training Loyola Maryland’s security officers on how to use the new system. Aside from an initial training course, he conducts sessions twice a year during the department’s in-service training period. “It’s pretty easy—everybody gets up to speed rather quickly,” he said. “The drop-down windows take a lot of the guesswork out of it.”
In the current reporting environment, Fox believes that an administrator like Ziegler is an imperative in the security department. “In the past, we haven’t really had a dedicated person in that role,” he said. “It takes one now, especially with all the Clery stuff. Any incident that goes unreported now is possibly a $37,000 fine.”
Andrew Barbour is an editorial freelancer with eCampus News.
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