[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 18 (Wednesday, February 12, 1997)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E230]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 ACCURACY IN CAMPUS CRIME REPORTING ACT

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                        HON. JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR.

                              of tennessee

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, February 12, 1997

  Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, Congressman Charles Schumer and I have 
introduced today the Accuracy in Campus Crime Reporting Act of 1997. 
This bill will close some of the loopholes that have allowed many 
colleges and universities to not report many instances of criminal 
activity on their campuses.
  Last year, the House of Representatives passed House Resolution 470, 
which expressed the sense of the Congress that the Department of 
Education was not adequately monitoring and enforcing compliance with 
the current campus security law. This resolution passed the House by a 
vote of 413 to 0 on September 11, 1996.
  The Accuracy in Campus Crime Reporting Act will supplement the Campus 
Security Act of 1990. Specifically, it will instruct colleges and 
universities, which receive Federal funding, to make available to their 
students in a timely fashion information on all crimes reported to 
campus police departments, security agencies, and other campus 
officials to whom crimes are reported. Such crime logs would be open to 
public inspection on a daily basis.
  Similar laws are already in effect in seven States: Tennessee, 
Massachusetts, Oklahoma, California, West Virginia, and Minnesota.
  The Accuracy in Campus Crime Reporting Act will also change Federal 
educational privacy laws that have shielded students who have been 
charged with criminal acts because of a definition that considers such 
charges as part of an individual student's private academic record.
  The current law lists only a few crimes that are required to be 
reported annually and these crimes are to be determined at the 
discretion of college administrators. Some college administrations do 
not comply with the spirit of the law because they would simply like to 
avoid bad publicity.
  The Accuracy in Campus Crime Reporting Act of 1997 will allow 
students and their parents to have a greater awareness of patterns of 
crimes that occur on campuses all too frequently. The bill will also 
make it possible to have independent confirmation of the accuracy of 
the annual statistics that colleges submit. I believe that this bill 
will help make colleges and universities much safer places.

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