Clery Act

The Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act is the landmark federal law, originally known as the Campus Security Act that requires colleges and universities across the United States to disclose information about crime on and around their campuses. The “Clery Act” is named in memory of 19-year-old Lehigh University freshman Jeanne Ann Clery who was sexually assaulted and murdered while asleep in her residence hall room on April 5, 1986. Jeanne’s parents, Connie and Howard, discovered that students hadn’t been told about 38 violent crimes on the Lehigh campus in the three years before her murder.

They joined with other campus crime victims and persuaded Congress to enact this law, which was originally known as the “Crime Awareness and Campus Security Act of 1990.”

The law was amended in 1992 to add a requirement that schools afford the victims of campus sexual assault certain basic rights, and was amended again in 1998 to expand the reporting requirements.

The 1998 amendments also formally named the law in memory of Jeanne Clery. The law was most recently amended in 2000 to require schools, beginning in 2003, to notify the campus community about where to obtain public "Megan’s Law" information about registered sex offenders on campus.

The Clery Act requires colleges and universities to:

• Publish an annual report that contains three years of campus crime statistics.
• Disclose crime statistics for the campus, public areas immediately adjacent to or running through the campus
• Provide timely notices of those crimes that have occurred and pose an ongoing threat to student and employees
• Implement emergency notification procedures if there is an immediate threat to the health and safety of students or employees on campus