The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation released to the public its 2015 'Crime on Campus' report. The annual study compiles crime data submitted to TBI by the state's colleges and universities through the Tennessee Incident Based Reporting System (TIBRS). Among the report's findings:

• Crime reported by Tennessee colleges and universities decreased by 7.0% from 2014 to 2015.
• 29% of all 2015 offenses reported were categorized as Larceny/Theft.
• Assault Offenses increased slightly, by 1.4%, between 2014 and 2015.
• The overall category of Sex Offenses-Forcible increased by 26.6% in 2015, which includes an increase in the number of reported rapes from 51 in 2014 to 56 in 2015.

As always, the TBI strongly discourages the comparison of one institution's statistics to another. The factors impacting crime vary from community to community and rudimentary comparisons will most likely result in inaccurate and generalized conclusions of the relative safety of one campus over another.

The full 'Crime on Campus' report, along with similar studies dating back to 2001, is available online for review at http://tn.gov/tbi/article/recent-publications.