Campus crime rates have fallen—for violent crime too

Listening to some of our trustees—especially former cop John Williams—one might get the idea that violent crime is on the rise at American colleges and universities. (See Williams' remarks last week: trustee report; 1:44 into the video.)

Not so.

From this morning’s Inside Higher Ed: “Campus Crime Rates Fell From ‘94 to ‘04”:

The tragic killings at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University have focused unprecedented attention on campus crime. But a special report issued by the Bureau of Justice Statistics last week — updating data more than a decade old — found long-term declines in campus crime rates at four-year institutions, and also substantial evidence for the professionalization of campus security forces.

Campus crime rates at four-year college and universities fell 9 percent for violent crimes and 30 percent for property crimes, between 1994 and 2004, the report found. The total in 2004, the bureau said, was 62 reports of serious violent crime and 1,625 reports of serious property crime per 100,000 students. Crime rates were significantly higher at private colleges than at public institutions, the report found….

Perhaps Mr. Williams should consider the possibility that he is exaggerating the threat of campus violence owing to its being more "available" in his thinking:

Essentially the [availability] heuristic operates on the notion that "if you can think of it, it must be important." Media coverage can help fuel a person's example bias with widespread and extensive coverage of unusual events, such as airline accidents, and less coverage of more routine, less sensational events, such as car accidents. For example, when asked to rate the probability of a variety of causes of death, people tend to rate more "newsworthy" events as more likely because they can more readily recall an example from memory. In fact, people often rate the chance of death by plane crash higher than the chance by car crash, and death by natural disaster as probable only because these unusual events are more often reported than more common causes of death. In actuality, death from car accidents is much more common than airline accidents. Additional rare forms of death are also seen as more common than they really are because of their inherent drama such as shark attacks, and lightning.... (Wikipedia: the availability heuristic)

It's frustrating, dealing with trustees (you know the ones) who are opposed to intellectualism and science. You can't reason with them. If you try, you'll be dismissed as being "pointy-headed" and unrealistic.

Trustees: take some logic. Hey, Mr. Probolsky took an "intro to phil" class, and he's much improved! Ain'cha noticed?