Clery Act


The Jeanne Clery Act of 1990 requires colleges and universities that participate in federal financial aid programs to report campus crime data and disclose timely information about crime on and near campus.

For more resources about the Clery Act, please visit www.clerycenter.org

About Clery

The “Clery Act” is named in memory of 19 year old Lehigh University freshman Jeanne Ann Clery who was 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 add more reporting requirements. The 1998 amendments also formally named the law in memory of Jeanne Clery.

The above information was provided by the Clery Center, 2017.