Are murder and manslaughter cases rising around college campuses? Here’s what we found out
The nation took a double hit of heavy reality over the weekend when two separate homicide events on two different college campuses on opposite sides of the country occurred just hours apart.
Four University of Idaho students were found dead in a house in Moscow, Idaho, on Sunday morning, prompting police to investigate the incident as a homicide but are yet to detain any suspects publicly.
Three University of Virginia student-athletes on the school’s football team were also gunned down on Sunday by a former team member. The suspect, Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., has since been arrested.
In a time that feels like the United States can’t go a week without hearing about the tragic loss of life of young people, which way are the numbers trending on college campuses in regards to homicides and violence?
According to National Center for Education Statistics numbers from 2007 to 2019, murder and negligent manslaughter cases are slowly rising across all types of college institutions.
The graphic above has two stats: murder and negligent manslaughter. Both fall under the definition of homicide, but not all homicide is murder, according to Cornell Law. Murder is when one human unlawfully kills another human, while negligent manslaughter is when a person’s criminal negligence results in the death of someone else.
The first point on the graphic, 2007, is an outlier due to the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, which left 32 dead, along with the shooter, who is not included in the count. Not including the numbers from that shooting, 2007 would come in at 12 murders, which is more in line with numbers at the time.
Spikes in 2013 and 2015 are attributable to the Santa Monica University shooting and the Umpqua Community College shooting, respectively. No notable higher-education murder sprees are attributable to 2017.
Negligent manslaughter cases have also gradually increased since none were recorded in 2013. Since then, there have been at least two negligent manslaughter cases and a high of five in 2019.
Both murder and negligent manslaughter are also most common at public four-year colleges. The following graph includes data from four-year institutions, such as U of I and the University of Virginia, and closely follows the pattern for all institutions.
Copy: Murder and negligent manslaughter in all college institutions
Infogram
NCES also keeps track of all types of crime on college campuses, including sex offenses, burglary, assault and arson.
From 2009 to 2019, all crimes have decreased on all college campuses by 20%, but murder and negligent manslaughter were one of two types of crime to see an increase by 2019.
Copy: Murder and negligent manslaughter in all college institutions
Infogram
