TBI releases 2015 ‘Crime on Campus’ report
JACKSON, Tenn. — New numbers released Tuesday shed new light on violence at colleges and universities across the Volunteer State. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation released its annual ‘Crime on Campus’ report and the statistics might surprise you.
The numbers show, overall, crime is down at colleges and universities, especially at our local schools. But the TBI said sex crimes are on the rise and it’s hoping this report will serve as a tool to change that.
“Our goal is a number of zero when the crime stats come out, we want to be zero,” Jackson State Community College Police Chief Darron Billings said.
Across the state, campus crime went down 7-percent between 2014 and 2015.
“The statistics let us know that we’re heading in the right direction as far as getting everything done,” Chief Billings said.
In Jackson and West Tennessee, our six colleges and universities faired better than average. Lane College saw a significant decrease in crimes like burglaries and assaults while Freed-Hardeman University had a slight increase in thefts. Jackson State Community College and Union University both stayed relativity the same with low numbers across the board.
“I see security making their rounds. They roll down their windows to check on me and wave at me,” Union student Rachel Edgren said. “I’ve never felt in danger on campus.”
The TBI said although overall crime is down forceable sex offenses like rape are up more than 25 percent. West Tennessee only saw one in 2015, that was reported by UT Martin.
Law enforcement attribute that low number, locally, to being proactive on campuses.
“The more that we report and the more that we’re active upon preventing it I think that we can get it back down to where it should be which is zero,” Billings said.
Although crime may never go away fully students said these statistics are the first step in bringing them even lower.
“People need to know what’s going on and people need to know if there’s a problem,” Edgren said. “They need to know where that problem is and then we can ad
dress it and figure out what to do about it.”
The University of Memphis-Lambuth Campus was also included in the TBI’s statistics but under the entire University of Memphis system, so we weren’t able to show the exact breakout for this particular campus.
The information used in the TBI’s ‘Crime on Campus’ report is submitted to them by the colleges and universities. You can read the entire report for yourself on the TBI’s website.
