Beyond Campus Crime Statistics: A New Approach to Making College Campuses Safer

Why colleges and universities need to measure what they do to prevent violence—not just what happens after it occurs.

When families send their children off to college, they trust that universities will provide more than an education. They expect a community where students are protected, their concerns are taken seriously, and threats to their safety are addressed before tragedy strikes.

But how do we know whether a college campus is truly safe?

For decades, campus safety has often been evaluated through reported crime statistics. While these numbers provide important information, they tell only part of the story. They don’t necessarily reveal whether a university has effective threat assessment procedures, properly trained personnel, a culture that encourages reporting, or systems that respond appropriately when students raise concerns.

Our new journal article, “Creating Incentives for Threat Management Best Practices: The Creation of a Campus Safety Score,” published in the Journal of Threat Assessment and Management in November 2026, explores a different approach.

The research examines the development of a comprehensive Campus Safety Score (CSS)—a framework designed to help colleges and universities evaluate their safety practices, identify weaknesses, and make meaningful improvements.

A central simple but important idea is that: We should measure how well universities work to prevent violence, not simply count incidents after they happen.

Universities can do Better: What we Learned from Lauren’s murder

The development of the Campus Safety Score was motivated by the life and death of Lauren McCluskey, a 21-year-old University of Utah honors student and track athlete who was murdered in October 2018 by a man she had briefly dated.

After discovering that this man had misrepresented his identity and criminal history, Lauren ended the relationship. He subsequently stalked, extorted, and intimidated her, including impersonating law enforcement. Lauren and her family and friends made more than 20 contacts with university officials and multiple law enforcement agencies regarding his escalating behavior. Despite these repeated warnings, the system her.

Lauren’s story exposed serious shortcomings in communication, threat assessment, training, reporting procedures, and institutional safety culture. It also raised a fundamental question: Why weren’t established warning signs recognized and addressed before it was too late?

Lauren’s experience illustrates why campus safety cannot depend solely on having policies written in handbooks or reporting crimes after they occur. Effective safety requires coordination, accountability, training, and a willingness to listen and act.

The Campus Safety Score grew out of a desire to turn these lessons into meaningful, measurable improvements for colleges and universities nationwide.

Why Traditional Measures of Campus Safety Are Not Enough

Most colleges and universities collect and report crime statistics under the federal Clery Act. These reports are important, but they have limitations. Crime statistics do not necessarily capture incidents that go unreported, threatening behaviors that have not yet resulted in a crime, or whether university personnel are adequately prepared to respond. They also may not reflect crimes experienced by students outside the formal geographic boundaries used in campus reporting.

Just as importantly, crime statistics cannot tell us whether students feel comfortable reporting concerns, whether they trust university officials, or whether they believe they will be supported when they come forward. A campus might report relatively few crimes while still having significant weaknesses in its prevention and response systems.

We argue that a more comprehensive approach is needed—one that considers the policies and practices universities have in place, their safety culture, crime data, and the experiences and perceptions of their campus communities.

Introducing the Four Pillars of the Campus Safety Score

The proposed Campus Safety Score uses four interconnected dimensions to evaluate institutional safety.

1. Policies, Procedures, and Training (50%)

This is the largest component of the proposed score because strong policies and effective training provide the foundation for campus safety.

The framework considers whether universities have:

• Established behavioral threat assessment and management procedures.
• Interdisciplinary threat assessment teams.
• Clear incident response plans and follow-up procedures.
• Anonymous reporting mechanisms.
• Properly trained campus police and university personnel.
• Trauma-informed victim response practices.
• Victim advocates and accessible support services.
• Effective violence prevention programming.

Having a threat assessment team is not enough. Team members must be trained, adequately resourced, and able to communicate across university departments. The entire campus community must understand how to recognize and report concerning behavior.

2. Campus Safety Culture (10%)

Policies alone cannot create a safe campus. The attitudes and behaviors of the people who make up the university community matter just as much. The proposed framework considers whether students, faculty, and staff feel comfortable reporting concerns and whether they believe the institution takes those concerns seriously. It also considers representation among campus safety personnel, awareness of safety policies, participation in prevention programs, and institutional commitment to addressing safety concerns. A healthy safety culture encourages people to speak up rather than remain silent because they fear they will not be believed or that nothing will be done.

3. Crime Data (20%)

The framework incorporates reported crime data, including Clery Act information and crime occurring in surrounding communities. This broader perspective recognizes that students do not spend all their time within campus boundaries. Their safety is influenced by the neighborhoods and communities where they live, work, socialize, and travel. Crime data provides an important foundation, but it must be interpreted in context and alongside other measures.

4. Student Perceptions (20%)

Perhaps one of the most important innovations is the inclusion of student perceptions. Do students feel safe? Do they know where to report concerning behavior? Do they believe university officials will listen and respond? Do they trust the institution to support them? These questions matter because a university’s safety record should reflect not only reported incidents but also the lived experiences of the people it serves. We also emphasize the importance of obtaining meaningful participation from different campus populations, recognizing that safety experiences can vary among students.

Together, these four dimensions offer a more complete picture of campus safety than crime statistics alone.

What Did the Research Find?

To evaluate the proposed framework, we interviewed 37 subject matter experts from seven professional areas:

• Criminal justice
• Threat management
• Violence prevention
• Counseling
• Student affairs and housing
• University administration
• Insurance and ratings companies

The experts reviewed the proposed Campus Safety Score and provided feedback about its usefulness, potential challenges, and opportunities for improvement. The overall response was predominantly positive. Experts viewed the framework as an important step toward more comprehensive and transparent campus safety assessments. Several findings stood out.

Identifying gaps and driving improvements

One of the most significant potential benefits was the ability to identify weaknesses in university safety systems. The score could help institutions recognize where additional training, personnel, policies, or resources are needed. It could also provide university leaders with objective information to support funding requests and prioritize investments in prevention.

Increasing institutional accountability

The framework could encourage universities to move beyond simply having safety policies on paper and focus on whether those policies are effectively implemented.

Promoting data-driven decisions

Rather than relying on isolated incidents or subjective assessments, institutions could use multiple sources of information to guide safety improvements.

Strengthening collaboration

The framework reinforces the importance of communication and cooperation among campus police, student affairs, housing, counseling, administrators, and other university departments. Campus safety is everyone’s responsibility, not the responsibility of one department.

Important Considerations: Fairness, Transparency, and Continuous Improvement

The experts also identified challenges that must be addressed before the Campus Safety Score is implemented. One concern is ensuring that the framework fairly evaluates institutions of different sizes, locations, and financial resources. A smaller or rural college should not automatically receive a lower score simply because it has fewer personnel or resources than a large university.

We also recognized that student perception surveys must be carefully designed. Surveys that are too lengthy may discourage participation, while low response rates can produce results that do not accurately represent the campus community.

Experts recommended expanding surveys to include faculty and staff, improving the measurement of safety culture, and considering additional indicators such as near-miss incidents, physical security assessments, and the effectiveness of trauma-informed responses.

Another important consideration is how scores are used. A public ranking system could motivate institutions to improve, but it could also create incentives to protect reputations rather than openly acknowledging weaknesses. For this reason, experts emphasized the value of using the score as an internal benchmarking and improvement tool, supported by transparency and independent evaluation. The goal should never be to achieve a better number simply for appearances. The goal should be to create safer environments.

Another important consideration is how scores are used. A public ranking system could motivate institutions to improve, but it could also create incentives to protect reputations rather than openly acknowledging weaknesses. For this reason, experts emphasized the value of using the score as an internal benchmarking and improvement tool, supported by transparency and independent evaluation. The goal should never be to achieve a better number simply for appearances. The goal should be to create safer environments.

Turning Research Into Action

The Campus Safety Score represents an important step toward changing the way higher education approaches safety. Instead of asking only how many crimes occurred, universities can begin asking more meaningful questions:

• Are our threat assessment procedures effective?
• Do our employees know how to recognize and report warning behaviors?
• Are we responding appropriately when students report stalking, harassment, or threatening behavior?
• Are our departments communicating and sharing information?
• Do students trust us to take their concerns seriously?
• Are we providing the resources necessary to prevent violence?

These questions shift the focus from reacting to tragedy to building systems that can prevent it. We emphasize that the current framework is preliminary. It must be developed into a working prototype, reviewed further by experts, and piloted at diverse institutions to establish its validity and reliability. That next phase is essential. A meaningful safety score must be evidence-based, transparent, fair, and focused on actual improvements.

Honoring Lauren’s Legacy Through Prevention

For us who loved Lauren, the importance of this research extends far beyond an academic exercise. Lauren’s death demonstrated the devastating consequences that can occur when warning signs are missed, communication breaks down, and institutions fail to respond effectively. Her story also demonstrated that campus safety must include more than preventing mass shootings. Stalking, intimate partner violence, harassment, intimidation, and escalating threatening behavior deserve the same serious attention.

The Campus Safety Score offers a way to translate these lessons into a framework that universities can use to examine their practices, identify deficiencies, and advocate for the resources needed to protect their communities. Ultimately, safer campuses require more than good intentions. They require measurable commitments, trained personnel, effective policies, strong communication, and a culture where every concern is taken seriously.

Lauren should be remembered not only for the life she lived, but also for the lives that might be protected through the changes inspired by her story.

The Campus Safety Score is an opportunity to make campus safety a measurable institutional priority—one that places prevention, accountability, and the well-being of students at the center of higher education. Because every student deserves to feel safe, every warning deserves attention, and every university should be prepared to act before tragedy strikes.

Research citation: Drumhiller, N. K., McCluskey, J. J., & Mittelhammer, R. (2026). Creating incentives for threat management best practices: The creation of a campus safety score. Journal of Threat Assessment and Management. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/tam0000293