Clery Reportable Crimes: Full List, Locations, and Definitions

Under the Clery Act, colleges and universities that take federal financial aid must count and publish statistics on a specific, federally defined list of crimes that happen inside their campus geography. Clery reportable crimes fall into five groups: seven core criminal offenses drawn from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting definitions, three Violence Against Women Act offenses, hate crimes across eight bias categories, arrests and disciplinary referrals for drug, liquor, and weapons violations, and — beginning with reports due in 2026 — hazing.¹²

The definitions are federal and standardized. A “burglary” under Clery is not necessarily what your state’s criminal code calls burglary, because the terms come from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting program rather than local law.³

The Seven Core Criminal Offenses

These are the primary crimes every institution must count:

Criminal homicide, which covers both murder and non-negligent manslaughter and, separately, manslaughter by negligence.
Sexual assault, which covers rape, fondling, incest, and statutory rape.
Robbery, meaning taking or attempting to take something of value from a person by force or threat of force.
Aggravated assault, an unlawful attack intended to inflict severe bodily injury, typically involving a weapon.
Burglary, the unlawful entry of a structure to commit a felony or theft.
Motor vehicle theft, meaning theft or attempted theft of a motor vehicle.
Arson, the willful or malicious burning or attempted burning of property.

Most definitions come from the FBI’s UCR Summary Reporting System. The sexual assault subcategories of fondling, incest, and statutory rape are defined using the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS).³ Rape is defined as penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ, without the consent of the victim.⁴

Counting rules also differ by offense. Each burglary of an individual dorm room counts as a separate offense, while a single burglary of an academic building counts once regardless of how many rooms the perpetrator entered. Sexual assaults are counted as one offense per victim.⁵

VAWA Offenses: Dating Violence, Domestic Violence, and Stalking

The 2013 reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act added three offense categories to Clery reporting.⁶

Dating violence is violence committed by someone in a romantic or intimate relationship with the victim, determined by the reporting party’s own characterization of the relationship.⁷
Domestic violence is a felony or misdemeanor crime of violence committed by a current or former spouse, intimate partner, co-parent, cohabitant, or anyone similarly situated under domestic violence law.⁷
Stalking is a course of conduct directed at a specific person that would cause a reasonable person to fear for their safety or suffer substantial emotional distress. A “course of conduct” requires two or more acts of following, monitoring, threatening, or similar behavior.⁷

VAWA offenses are always reported as separate statistics. They sit outside the hierarchy rule that governs the primary criminal offenses.⁸

Hate Crimes and the Four Extra Offenses

Any of the criminal offenses or VAWA offenses above must be flagged as a hate crime when motivated by bias. On top of that, four offenses that are otherwise not Clery reportable do become reportable when they qualify as hate crimes:¹

Larceny-theft
Simple assault
Intimidation
Destruction, damage, or vandalism of property

Institutions must track hate crimes across eight bias categories: race, religion, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, ethnicity, national origin, and disability.⁹¹⁰ So a simple assault with no bias motive is not counted; the same assault motivated by the victim’s religion is.

Arrests and Disciplinary Referrals for Drugs, Liquor, and Weapons

Separate statistics must be reported for arrests and for referrals for campus disciplinary action in three areas:¹

Weapons law violations
Drug abuse violations
Liquor law violations

An arrest covers anyone processed by arrest, citation, or summons. A referral for disciplinary action means the person was referred to a campus official who initiated a formal proceeding that could result in a sanction, but only for alleged violations of law rather than purely internal policy infractions. Two boundaries catch schools out. Liquor law violations do not include driving under the influence or public drunkenness. Drug violations do not include a person’s use of a personal prescription that was legally issued to them.¹¹

Hazing: The Newest Reportable Category

The Stop Campus Hazing Act, signed into law on December 23, 2024, made hazing a Clery reportable offense. It was the first new crime category added in more than a decade. Hazing is defined as any intentional, knowing, or reckless act committed against a person during initiation, affiliation with, or maintenance of membership in a student organization that creates a substantial risk of physical injury, mental harm, or degradation.² Qualifying conduct includes beating, forced consumption of alcohol or drugs, coerced sleep deprivation, and threats of bodily harm, among other acts.¹²

Institutions began collecting hazing statistics on January 1, 2025. The first Annual Security Report that must include them is due October 1, 2026.²

Where the Crime Has to Happen

A crime is Clery reportable only if it happens inside the school’s “Clery geography.” Institutions divide their territory into four categories and report statistics separately for each.¹

On-campus: buildings and property owned or controlled by the institution within a reasonably contiguous area and used for educational purposes, including facilities controlled by third parties (such as retail vendors) inside the campus footprint and frequently used by students.
On-campus student housing: any student housing facility owned or controlled by the institution within the contiguous campus area, tracked as a subset of on-campus property.
Noncampus: property owned or controlled by the institution or by a recognized student organization, used for educational purposes but not within the contiguous campus. This picks up off-campus fraternity and sorority houses, athletic facilities, and study-abroad locations where the institution rents or leases space.¹³
Public property: streets, sidewalks, and parking facilities within or immediately adjacent to and accessible from the campus. Private property is excluded even if students regularly use it.¹

A crime that happens in a privately owned off-campus apartment a student rents on their own does not fall inside any of these categories, and the school does not count it. A crime in a fraternity house recognized by the institution does.

The Hierarchy Rule: What Happens When One Incident Involves Several Crimes

When multiple criminal offenses happen in a single incident, institutions generally count only the most serious one. This is the hierarchy rule, adapted from the FBI’s UCR program. From most to least serious: murder and non-negligent manslaughter, manslaughter by negligence, sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, and motor vehicle theft.⁸

Several exceptions apply. Arson is always disclosed regardless of what else happened in the same incident. If both murder and sexual assault occur in one incident, both are counted. VAWA offenses fall outside the hierarchy entirely and are always counted. Arrests and disciplinary referrals for drug, liquor, and weapons violations are also reported separately from the hierarchy.⁵ The daily crime log is a separate matter: it lists every crime reported in an incident, even the ones the hierarchy rule keeps out of the Annual Security Report statistics.⁸

When a Reported Crime Doesn’t Count: Unfounded Reports

A reported crime can be removed from the count as “unfounded” only if sworn or commissioned law enforcement personnel have fully investigated it and formally determined the report was false or baseless. A campus administrator or dean cannot unfound a crime on their own. Institutions must still disclose the total number of unfounded reports in their Annual Security Report for each of the three most recent calendar years, so an unfounded crime is subtracted from the offense count but does not disappear from the report.¹

1
U.S. Department of Education. Clery Act Appendix
2
Clery Center. SCHA – What You Need to Know
3
University of Kansas Civil Rights. Clery Act Crime Definitions
4
USC Department of Public Safety. Crime Definitions
5
Utah State University. Clery Week – Hierarchy Rule
6
Clery Center. VAWA, DFSCA, and FERPA
7
Cornell Law Institute. 34 CFR 668.46
8
Husch Blackwell. Clery Blog Series – Hierarchy Rule
9
Temple University Safety. Hate Crimes
10
Clery Center. Explaining Hate Crimes
11
Temple University Safety. Clery Act Crime Definitions
12
Clery Center. SCHA Getting Started Guide
13
Montana State University. Clery Geography Definitions