New Report/Data: “Indicators Of School Crime And Safety: 2018”

New today from the Bureau of Justice Statistics and National Center for Education Statistics.

Indicators Of School Crime And Safety: 2018

This annual report, produced jointly by the Bureau of Justice Statistics and National Center for Education Statistics, presents data on school crime and safety from national surveys of students, teachers, principals, and postsecondary institutions. It contains findings on 22 indicators of school crime and safety, including violent deaths; nonfatal student and teacher victimization; school environment; fights, weapons, and illegal substances; fear and avoidance; discipline, safety, and security measures; and postsecondary campus safety and security. Selected findings on opioids, bullying, and active shooter incidents in educational settings are also included.

Data sources include the National Crime Victimization Survey, the School Crime Supplement to the NCVS, the School-Associated Violent Death Surveillance System, the School Survey on Crime and Safety, the Schools and Staffing Survey, the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, and the Campus Safety and Security Survey.

Highlights

• Based on the 2017 National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), students ages 12 to 18 experienced 827,000 total victimizations (i.e., theft and nonfatal violent victimization) at school and 503,800 total victimizations away from school.

School Environment

• From 2000 to 2017, there were 153 casualties (67 killed and 86 wounded) in active shooter incidents at elementary and secondary schools and 143 casualties (70 killed and 73 wounded) in active shooter incidents at postsecondary institutions.
• In 2017, about 20 percent of students ages 12–18 reported being bullied at school during the school year. A declining trend between 2005 and 2017 in the percentage of students who reported being bullied at school was observed for both bullying overall and for most of the student and school characteristics examined.
• About 6 percent of students ages 12–18 reported being called hate-related words at school during the school year in 2017, representing a decrease from 12 percent in 2001. This percentage also decreased between 2001 and 2017 for male and female students as well as for White, Black, and Hispanic students.
• During the 2015-16 school year, 47% of schools reported one or more crime incidents to police. The percentage of public schools reporting incidents to police was lower in 2015-16 than in every prior survey year.
• About 99 percent of students ages 12–18 reported that they observed the use of at least one of the selected safety and security measures at their schools in 2017. The three most commonly observed safety and security measures were a written code of student conduct (95 percent), a requirement that visitors sign in and wear visitor badges or stickers (90 percent), and the presence of school staff (other than security guards or assigned police officers) or other adults supervising the hallway (88 percent).
• Between 2001 and 2017, the percentage of students ages 12 to 18 who reported that gangs were present at their school during the school year decreased overall (from 20% to 9%), as well as for students from urban areas (from 29% to 11%), suburban areas (from 18% to 8%), and rural areas (from 13% to 7%).

Postsecondary Institutions

• The number of on-campus crimes reported in 2016 was lower than the number reported in 2001 for every category except forcible sex offenses and negligent manslaughter offenses, The number of reported forcible sex crimes on campus increased from 2,200 in 2001 to 8,900 in 2016 (a 305 percent increase).
• Race, religion, and sexual orientation were the categories of motivating bias most frequently associated with the 1,070 hate crimes reported on college campuses in 2016.

Fights and Weapons

• The percentage of students in grades 9–12 who reported having been in a physical fight anywhere in the previous 12 months decreased between 2001 and 2017 (from 33 to 24 percent), as did the percentage of students in these grades who reported having been in a physical fight on school property (from 13 to 9 percent).
• In 2017, about 16 percent of students in grades 9–12 reported that they had carried a weapon anywhere at least 1 day during the previous 30 days and 4 percent reported carrying a weapon on school property at least 1 day during the previous 30 days.  

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