Category: Policing

Policing the American University: Appendix

Policing the American University: Online Appendix

For additional context, online Appendix B is an online appendix giving additional tables and graphs providing more detailed disaggregation of CPD data presented in Policing the American University.

UCR Coverage by Sector and Size

We can further breakdown these results by distinguishing universities by both size and whether they are public or private in the table below. Here we confirm the previous findings by BJS that public universities are more likely to have police agencies and that almost all campus police serve larger public or private non-profit institutions.

University TypeNumber of StudentsCampus CountMatched ORIOne or More EmployeesOne or More Arrests
Public20,000 and above191142138123
Public10,000–19,999277157143116
Public5,000–9,999392196167140
Public1,000–4,999687177142102
PublicUnder 1,000448401710
Private not-for-profit20,000 and above23786
Private not-for-profit10,000–19,99952141514
Private not-for-profit5,000–9,999111231615
Private not-for-profit1,000–4,999723815837
Private not-for-profitUnder 1,0001,012237
Private for-profit20,000 and above10
Private for-profit10,000–19,9998
Private for-profit5,000–9,99913
Private for-profit1,000–4,99913521
Private for-profitUnder 1,0002,86042
SOURCE: FBI Uniform Crime Report, U.S. Department of Education Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. Year: 2016. Analysis by Civilytics.

Another way to look at campus police arrest rates over time is to standardize the arrests by the number of officers being reported on. This figure shows the same patterns of growth and the same relative rankings of offenses in the overall arrest trend and the arrests per student trend. This suggests that as more campus police departments report their data to the UCR the same overall pattern of arrest volume is holding.

Variance in CPD Arrests per Officer over Time

This figure shows the distribution of the arrests per officer across all CPDs with at least 5 arrests and 5 officers. This figure shows that while the mean arrests per officer for all CPDs has changed over time, the distribution of arrests per officer across CPDs has remained relatively stable. The biggest change has been a dramatic reduction in the most extreme outliers of arrests per officer, highlighted by the shrinking of the 75th percentile value (far right red line). The distribution has also become less bi-modal over time.

Further Comparisons of Campus and Municipal Police

Comparing Total Arrests by Offense for Campus and Municipal Police Departments in 2016

Comparing Arrest Share of Offenses in 2016 between Campus and Municipal Police Departments

Comparing Arrest Share of Offenses by Race (Black and White) for CPDs in 1996 and 2016

Number of CPDs Making Arrests and Total Arrests by CPDs for Rape and Sex Offenses