Phu Vo ECON 120: Economics of Crime February 05, 2026 Paper 1: Campus Crime Statistics, North Carolina, From 2019 - 2023
For Project 1, I looked at reported campus crime statistics at the 5 most populous universities (4-year, with on-campus housing) in North Carolina– North Carolina State University at Raleigh (NCSU), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNCC), East Carolina University (ECU), and Appalachian State (App State) between 2019-2023. The project covers sexual misconduct, aggravated assault, and burglary rates per 100,000 students through three data visualizations.
The data used comes from the U.S. Department of Education’s Campus Safety and Security Program, which draws from the OPE Campus Safety and Security Statistics website. OPE scrapes the data annually from institutions that receive Title IV funding, backed by the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act and the Higher Education Opportunity Act (U.S. Department of Education, 2026). Institutions are required to report on-campus incidents involving students, staff, and visitors using the standardized definitions of sexual misconduct (which includes rape, fondling, incest, and statutory rape), aggravated assault (an unlawful attack intended to cause severe bodily injury), and burglary (unlawful entry into a structure with the intent to commit a crime). As enrollment size differs across schools, measures of data were converted into rates per 100,000 students to allow for comparisons across campuses and at the national level.
The first data-viz shows trends in sexual misconduct using a trend-line chart that plots rates per 100,000 students between 2019 and 2023. While all five campuses show increases following the post-COVID return to offline instruction, NCSU has an extremely prominent spike in 2022, around approximately 343 reported sexual misconduct incidents per 100,000 students, before sharply declining the following year. This peak is a result of publicized sexual abuse allegations against Robert Murphy Jr., the previous Director of Sports Medicine at NCSU. Starting with the men’s soccer team in 2022, athletes revealed that Murphy had “engaged in sexual misconduct” and “grooming” across multiple men’s sports teams since 2012. After the news broke, Murphy was fired and now faces ongoing legal battles involving 31 plaintiffs (Bahns, 2026). The other campuses had smaller fluctuations, suggesting that not all schools follow uniform crime reporting patterns. Institutional investigations, press coverage, and survivor advocacy can reflect changes in campus crime reporting rather than abrupt changes in underlying victimization.
In the NIJ Journal article “How Prevalent Is Campus Sexual Assault in the United States,” the authors emphasize that campus sexual violence is widespread but inconsistently captured by government statistics. After 15 years of research, the authors concluded “[studies] with lower estimates… point to the same troubling truth: a substantial proportion of college students are sexually assaulted” (Fedina, Lynn Holmes, & Backes, 2016, p. 28). Because prevalence estimates vary due to differences in measurement and reporting, increases in reported cases are more likely to reflect shifts in reporting behavior or institutional response rather than sudden increases in underlying crime. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reports that forcible sexual offenses, particularly at “institutions with residence halls,” have become the most frequently reported on-campus crime between 2011 and 2021, surpassing burglary as the most reported crime, from 22 reports to 75 per 100,000 students now (NCES, 2024).
The second visualization compares aggravated assault rates using a treemap displaying the average rate per 100,000 students over the five years. When plotting the data, aggregating by average rather than sum ensures that our comparison reflects the relative likelihood rather than the cumulative amount, preventing larger campuses from dominating the visualization. Except for UNC, which averaged approximately 27.5 aggravated assaults per 100,000 students, each of the NC universities reported rates below the national average of 15 aggravated assaults per 100,000 students in 2021 (NCES, 2024). Impressively, App State averaged only 0.56 aggravated assaults per 100,000 students across the recorded period. Compared to the other serious offenses, aggravated assault is a relatively rare occurrence on North Carolina campuses. This could be possible due to deterrence effect policies, such as revoking scholarships or expulsion.
The final visualization exhibits burglary rates using a lollipop chart. Nationally, NCES reports an average of approximately 47 burglaries per 100,000 full-time-equivalent students (NCES, 2024). However, North Carolina supports a different relationship than just class size to burglary risk. While NCSU, UNC, and UNCC have similarly large enrollments, their burglary rates differ sharply: UNC reports the highest average rate (about 64.13 per 100,000), followed by NCSU (41.11), while UNCC reports a lower rate (about 4.68). Rather than student count alone driving burglary risk, the pattern suggests that campus-specific conditions– such as housing layout, access control, surveillance, and prevention infrastructure shape property crime. In “The Reality of Crime on Campus,” Purdum quotes a student that “[campus is] an extension of the real world,” and that student exposure and institutional security practices influence crime patterns (Purdum, 1988, pg. 47). These findings reflect how criminals only commit crimes when their benefits outweigh their costs– as environmental structures and security practices create large differences in burglary risk across campuses of comparable size, people are more likely to burglarize when they face lower certainty of punishment.
Works Cited
Carter, B. (2026, February 2).NC State Lawsuit Update: More Former Athletes Join Sex Abuse Lawsuit vs. Ex-Trainer As Alleged Victim Tally Balloons to 31. CBS Sports. https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/former-nc-state-athletes-join-sexual-a buse-lawsuit/ Fedina, L., Lynn Holmes, J., & Backes, B. (2016).How Prevalent Is Campus Sexual Assault In The United States? (277), 27–30. https://nij.ojp.gov/ National Center for Education Statistics. (2024, July).Criminal Incidents at Postsecondary Institutions. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/a21/postsecondary-criminal-incidents Purdum, T. (1988, April 10).The Reality of Crime on Campus. 47. https://www.nytimes.com/1988/04/10/education/the-reality-of-crime-on-campus.html U.S. Department of Education: Campus Safety and Security Program. (2026, February). Campus Safety and Security. https://ope.ed.gov/campussafety/#/
Author’s Statement
During the write-up of Project 1, and the creation of the dashboard, no generative AI tools were used to assist with the production of this assignment. All research, writing, and revision were completely and independently done by the author (Phu Vo) to develop foundational writing and research skills.