UK universities need to do more for student safety

By Irina Haivas Iasi

Universities in the United Kingdom should put greater emphasis on crime prevention programmes, says Professor Bonnie Fisher from the Division of Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati.

Fisher has urged that UK universities should address the challenges towards student safety: "There is a combination of challenges, including students' lifestyle which puts that at risk, as well as their lack of adopting crime prevention strategies."

A study led by Fisher, which is published in the current edition of the British Journal of Criminology,¹ looked at students from seven UK universities and found that a third of students were victimised over the one year study period. Over a third of this group had been subjected to crime before. The most frequent types of crime were thefts, criminal damage, and burglary--these accounted for 70% of all crimes against students. The rest of the crimes included assaults, robbery, and sexual offences. The study also showed that two thirds of all incidents were not reported to the police.

Talking about the results of the report, Fisher said, "I was very surprised to learn that universities in UK do not publicly report their crime statistics, and that there is no standard by which crime data on campuses is kept."

Most student crime is committed by students themselves: "Universities need to address this issue. Students are most fearful of strangers as perpetrators, but it is students who commit the majority of crimes against each other. So students need to be educated as to who commits the majority of crimes against them, and they need to be taught better crime prevention skills."

The study findings may be accessed at www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/r194.pdf

1. Fisher BS, Wilkes ARP. A tale of two ivory towers: a comparative analysis of victimization rates and risks between university students in the United States and England. Br J Criminol 2003;43:526-45.