NCJ Number
137173
Journal
Campus Law Enforcement Journal Volume: 22 Issue: 1 Dated: (January-February 1992) Pages: 24-27
Date Published
1992
Length
4 pages
Annotation
Hailed by many campus police chiefs and security directors as a progressive step toward crime prevention and improved campus security, the Crime Awareness and Campus Security Act of 1990 is not the panacea many believe it to be.
Abstract
While the law may serve the interests of many, it also has the potential for distracting an institution and its security personnel from their basic missions and may unnecessarily divert significant resources away from the very goals of the law and its proponents. The Crime Awareness and Campus Security Act affects different operational units of educational institutions and each type of educational institution differently and prescribes far more than a disclosure of crime data. It imposes a standard on colleges and universities not applied to any other public or private enterprise. Few, including those writing recommendations about how to comply with the act, have addressed the magnitude of the task, the potential costs, and the enhanced liabilities resulting from prescriptions of the act. The act is too prescriptive and unnecessarily expensive for the intended or actual results to be achieved. Rather than being a tool for proper reporting, disclosure, and crime prevention activities, the act tends to hold educational institutions accountable for the acts of society at large and places burdens on them that it places on no one else. 4 references