College Campus Crime and Safety Statistics

Crime may be on the decline throughout the nation, but safety remains a top priority for college students and their families. In a 2022 BestColleges survey, 60% of current and prospective undergraduate and graduate students said that campus safety was a factor they considered when choosing their school.

To better understand crime and safety on college campuses, we took a look into the most common crimes at schools, how many crimes occur, and how different organizations are working to combat these incidents.

According to the most recently available data from the U.S. Department of Education’s Campus Safety Survey, there were 31,137 criminal offenses reported on more than 10,000 college campuses in 2021. Of these reported crimes, just 2% were unfounded.^{Note Reference [1]}

The number of criminal offenses reported on campuses has decreased by 53% since 2005. In other words, it has been slashed in half.^{Note Reference [1]}

This significant drop in reported crimes isn’t limited to college campuses. Across the nation, the rate of violent crime has decreased by more than 45% since 1990.^[2]

Experts have long-speculated that a variety of factors, including better policing, increased police presence, decreased alcohol consumption, the rise of technology, an aging population, and even abortion, has contributed to falling violent crime rates.^{[3], [4]}

The most commonly reported criminal offenses on campuses in 2021 included burglaries, rape, motor vehicle thefts, and unwanted touching or fondling.^{Note Reference [1]}

Of the more than 31,000 crimes reported on campuses in 2021, 42% qualified as Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) offenses.^{Note Reference [1]} This includes incidents of domestic violence, dating violence, and stalking.

Hate crimes are offenses like vandalism, arson, assault, or murder that contain an added element of bias. For an offense to qualify as a hate crime, it must be motivated fully or in part by the perpetrator’s bias against the victim’s race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity.^[5]

In 2021, there were 1,626 hate crimes reported on college campuses — the largest number of hate crimes ever reported at institutions since the Department of Education first began collecting this data in 2005.^{Note Reference [1]} Over the last 16 years, the number of reported hate crimes has increased by nearly 3,600%.

While half of all reported hate crimes fell under every category of bias, the most common types of hate crimes reported were about race, sexual orientation, or religion.^{Note Reference [1]}

In 2021, 21,816 arrests were reported on college campuses.^{Note Reference [1]}

Since 2005, the number of reported arrests on campuses has decreased by approximately 72%.^{Note Reference [1]}

Reported arrests peaked in 2012 at more than 78,000 and were lowest in 2021 at just under 22,000.

During the same year, there were 130,911 disciplinary actions reported on college campuses.^{Note Reference [1]}