Testimony of

S. Daniel Carter, Senior Vice President

Security On Campus, Inc.

Before The United States Senate Committee On The Judiciary

Campus Crime: Compliance And Enforcement Under The Clery Act

May 19, 2006

Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to be here today on behalf of students and campus crime victims to discuss the current state of compliance with and enforcement of the federal Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act.

There have been significant problems with the implementation of this Act – the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) found that only about a third of all colleges report their crime statistics in a manner fully consistent with the Act’s requirements. A lack of clear guidance and a lack of strong enforcement have been two major factors contributing to these Clery Act violations.

Despite these widespread compliance problems, however, there have also been major improvements in recent years. More schools are embracing the Act. And the new Clery Act handbook consolidating more than a dozen sources of guidance has been released by the U.S. Department of Education (ED) giving colleges a clear roadmap to compliance.

Security On Campus, Inc. (SOC) offers the following recommendations to help this critical progress continue:

• A single Campus Security Policy Compliance Office (CSPCO) should be established within ED that consolidates all Clery Act and postsecondary campus security related functions. Currently regional offices that have neither the expertise nor resources necessary are solely responsible for implementing and enforcing the Act. No authoritative source for guidance currently exists either.

• Implementation and enforcement of the Clery Act should be conducted jointly by ED and DOJ. DOJ possesses significant crime reporting and crime victim assistance expertise that ED lacks. They are also best suited to handle enforcement in cases involving serious violations since ED is primarily a partner rather than a regulator. Nearly 600 schools, out of 6,000, have been found in violation but only 3 have been fined.

• Institutions should be required to notify students and employees in their Clery Act annual security reports about how they can file a complaint. Currently unless a student locates SOC through our web site, securityoncampus.org, or other materials they are never informed about what to do if their school is violating the law.

• The Clery Act technical assistance authorized by Congress at DOJ for Campus Violence Prevention Grant recipients ought to be fully funded at $200,000 per fiscal year and expanded to cover all schools that have Clery obligations. Although SOC has for many years served as a free clearinghouse for Clery Act information there have been no resources for widespread technical assistance to be offered to institutions.

There are also several key compliance problems that we would like to bring to your attention:

• Many colleges continue to improperly report their sexual assault statistics. As noted by the DOJ only about a third properly use the inclusive term “forcible sex-offenses” as required by Clery. Additionally not all collect this data from every non law-enforcement official on campus who is supposed to report, such as deans and housing officers. These are not mere technical problems and significantly affect the information students get.

• The public crime log does not always contain all of the information it is supposed to. Over the years we’ve seen many cases of schools classifying crimes as serious as rape as innocuous things like “agency assist” or “miscellaneous.” Another very common problem is omission of the actual date and time of the offense, critical to knowing when dangers actually happen.

• Timely warnings are not issued in acquaintance sexual assault cases. When there is an acquaintance sexual assault on campus many if not most schools feel that a timely warning is not warranted even if the accused student remains on campus. Research, however, has shown that acquaintance rapists are as predatory as their stranger rapist counterparts. Students ought to be warned about this danger.

• Sexual assault victims don’t receive proper notice of disciplinary action taken against their alleged assailants. A recent example comes from Temple University where one victim’s notice was apparently sent to her old residence hall address instead of her home after she had withdrawn for the semester. This left her unaware that on appeal the accused’s expulsion had been reversed until she ended up in a class with her alleged assailant the next semester, a very traumatic experience. Even when we helped her get that notice, four months late, it didn’t explain why the expulsion had been reversed.

Although not directly a Clery Act issue there is one additional problem that warrants a serious review. Many private colleges that employ sworn police officers do not allow the public to have the same access to actual crime report information that state law requires of police officers working at public colleges or in local jurisdictions. Colleges in Georgia and Massachusetts even recently won state court rulings that said they didn’t have to turn over these records. This denies students at private colleges equal protection under the law putting them at undue risk.

I would like to conclude my comments on a positive note though, one that gives me hope that our two decades of hard work in memory of Jeanne Clery are truly beginning to show dividends. In partnership with DOJ’s Office for Victims of Crime and organizations like the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators (IACLEA) we are putting together the first ever multi-disciplinary Clery Act training program. It will bring together all of the puzzle pieces needed to comply with the Act. Our first session will be offered right here in Philadelphia later this year. We’d like to invite all area schools to send teams to this event.

Thank you again for this opportunity to address these critical issues, and for your decades of work to keep students safe on campus. I would now be happy to answer any questions.