This report contains a summary of the crime statistics for the University of California for the calendar year 2003. It is divided into sections, one for each of the nine campuses and for the system as a whole. Each section contains charts and graphs allowing for an analysis of crime rates and trends over a period of several years. Individual narrative reports provided by the police department on each campus are included.

A crime is an act specifically prohibited by law, or failure to perform an act specifically required by law, for which punishment is prescribed.

Felonies are serious crimes for which the offender can be sentenced to state prison.

Misdemeanors are less serious crimes for which the offender can be sentenced to various combinations of fines, probation, or county jail time.

Infractions are the least serious offenses, usually punishable by a fine.

Crimes at all the University of California campuses are counted by each individual Police Department using the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program. The UCR Program was inaugurated sixty-nine years ago and is administered on the national level by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). It provides criminal statistics for use in law enforcement administration, operation, and management.

In California, the UCR program is administered by the Bureau of Criminal Statistics (BCS) of the Department of Justice.

As part of this program, the University of California Police Department, and all law enforcement agencies throughout the state, report summary information to BCS on “selected” offenses. Offenses reported are classified by UCR definitions designed to eliminate differences among various states in penal code definitions of crimes. This information is not only incorporated in this Annual Report; it is also used in the State of California Crime and Delinquency, and the FBI Crime in the United States Publications. The UCR selected offenses are referred to in the reports as “FBI Crime Index Offenses.”

The FBI Crime Index Offenses, selected by UCR because of their seriousness, frequency of occurrence, and likelihood of being reported to the police are willful homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson. Except for larceny-theft, UCR does not count misdemeanors and infractions.

In addition to the FBI Crime Index Offenses, this report also lists “Other Offenses”, many of which are misdemeanors and infractions. “Other Offenses” includes offenses such as simple assault, sex offenses (other than rape) and public drunkenness. These offenses are listed in an attempt to indicate, in more detail than allowed by the UCR program, the types of offenses that occur on the University of California campuses.

Definitions of the offenses in both categories are listed in the glossary of this report.

Most crimes occur singly as opposed to many crimes being committed simultaneously. However, if several offenses are committed at the same time, only one is reported through UCR. For example, if one person were to enter a store, rob eight customers and kill the cashier, only the homicide would be reported.

The hierarchy rule assigns a value to each of the crimes and requires that only the single most serious offenses be reported. Arson is the exception. Since arson frequently occurs in conjunction with other crimes reported in the UCR system, it was felt that valuable information would be lost using the hierarchy rule.

The UCR system collects information in summary form, which shows one count for each offense, reported. No distinction can be made as to the range of seriousness that can be present in most offenses.

UCR data is collected nationwide in a manner that standardizes the definitions of offenses. However, a number of factors can influence crime counts in particular jurisdictions. These factors should be considered when using UCR crime statistics, especially for comparison purposes.

• Variation in the composition of the population, particularly age structure.
• Population density and size of locality and its surrounding area.
• Stability of population with respect to residents’ mobility and transient factors.
• Economic conditions, including job availability.
• Cultural conditions, such as education, recreation, and religious characteristics.
• Climate.
• Effective strength of law enforcement agencies.
• Administrative and investigative emphasis of law enforcement.
• Policies of other components of the criminal justice system (i.e. prosecutorial, judicial, correctional, and probational).
• Attitudes of citizenry toward crime.
• Crime reporting practices of citizenry.

Since its inception in 1930, UCR has become a nationwide program. All California law enforcement agencies report UCR data. Quality control surveys conducted by BCS staff since the middle 1970’s have shown a high level of compliance with UCR reporting standards. The number of participants and the amount of data collected under the stringent rules of the system make it a prime indicator of the amount and fluctuation of serious crime.

For each campus, two graphs are provided depicting statistics for violent and property crime, comparing the data with that of the State of California and that of the metropolitan area (county) in which the campus is located. For UC Berkeley, the metropolitan area corresponds to Alameda and Contra Costa Counties. The FBI’s Uniform Crime Report publication, Crime in the United States, shows these two counties as the metropolitan statistical area for the Berkeley campus. For the UC Davis campus, the metropolitan area corresponds to Solano and Yolo Counties. For the UC Davis Medical Center, the metropolitan area is Sacramento County. The metropolitan area for UC Davis as a whole corresponds to Sacramento, Solano, and Yolo Counties. The metropolitan area for all aspects of UC Irvine is Orange County. The metropolitan area for UC Los Angeles is Los Angeles County. The metropolitan area for UC Riverside corresponds to Riverside and San Bernardino Counties. The metropolitan area for UC San Diego is San Diego County. The metropolitan area for UC San Francisco is San Francisco County. The metropolitan area for UC Santa Barbara is Santa Barbara County. The metropolitan area for UC Santa Cruz is Santa Cruz County.

It is acknowledged that campuses have a daily population that includes many persons, such as visitors, vendors, contractors and their workers, those attending conferences, patients, and others. Factoring in an estimated number to cover these persons was not considered necessary, since a significant percentage of students do not attend classes each day, a proportionate number of faculty do not teach each day, and a percentage of staff employees are absent for a variety of legitimate reasons.

It is felt such absence offset any figure one might conjure up to cover the additional persons described.

For that reason, the population figures used for the campuses is simply the total number of students, faculty, and staff enrolled or employed at each.

The Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act, codified at 20 USC 1092 (f) as a part of the Higher Education Act of 1965, is a federal law that requires colleges and universities to disclose certain timely and annual information about campus crime and security policies. The criteria for defining crime under the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act differs from the criteria under the Uniform Crime Reporting program.

The Annual Report & Crime Statistics 2003, does not include all the information required under “the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act,” rather it does include information from victims who have chosen to report incidents to the criminal justice system. The information contained in this Annual Report & Crime Statistics 2003 is included in a separate Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act Annual Report which is published yearly on October 1st.

More information about the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act can be found at the following website: http://www.soconline.org

The foregoing contains excerpts from the California Department of Justice publication Crime and Delinquency in California, 1987.