by John Gramlich, Stateline.org Staff Writer

Schools and colleges across the country do not report crime and violent incidents on campus consistently or accurately — in many cases because they are not required to, according to safety experts and a new report by 27 state attorneys general.

A patchwork of state and federal laws intended to tally assaults, robberies, drug use and other crime at primary and secondary schools — as well as colleges and universities — fails to provide a clear picture of the scope of the problem, critics charge. Out-of-date, incomplete statistics are common and authorities have few effective tools to penalize institutions that do not comply, including fines that observers say amount to a “drop in the bucket.”

Making matters worse, school and college officials are reluctant to release more comprehensive information on their own because of stigmas that can be attached to institutions with frequent occurrences of crime, said Ronald Stephens, executive director of the California-based National School Safety Center, which advocates for safer primary and secondary schools.

Stephens and others stressed that high crime rates do not necessarily reflect administrative failures, and that the absence of accurate information hinders efforts to understand and prevent illegal activity.

“Good crime data can provide a summary of what crimes are occurring, where they are happening and when they are happening,” Stephens said in an e-mail to Stateline.org. “When this information is available, school officials can develop more effective prevention and remediation programs and provide responsible adult supervision to those areas where the difficulties are occurring.”

While some advocates for school and college safety have called attention to the underreporting of crime on campus in the past, a report issued Sept. 6 by a bipartisan task force of state attorneys general — convened in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech massacre — gives new weight to the school safety experts’ concerns….

Under the Clery Act, the Department of Education gathers specific instances of crime on or near college campuses. Colleges that do not meet the act’s reporting requirements are subject to fines of up to $27,500 per violation.

But only about two-thirds of colleges and universities “fully comply” with the Clery Act, often because of image concerns and because federal fines are considered insignificant, said Alison Kiss of Security on Campus, Inc., a nonprofit organization that works to improve safety on college campuses and assists with the enforcement of the Clery Act by examining the statistics that colleges are required to release.

“If there’s a school or college with 20,000 students and they’re reporting no forcible rapes, it raises a red flag for us,” Kiss said. That, according to Kiss, means one of two things: the school has “a utopian society or a culture of silence.”