When colleges catalog information about crimes reported on campus, they're not just doing it for their own records.
Robert Kehoe is the chief of police at the College at Brockport. They're one of 28 SUNY Schools that uses New York State University Police on campus.
"Every year it seems the federal government, and at times the state government, develop certain mandates in in addition to what we already do in terms of our processes procedures and reporting requirements."
The process of recording crime stats for national review was first introduced through The Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act, also known as the Clery Act, in 1990.
Colleges that participate in financial aid have to keep crime stats, issue timely warnings to students about crimes, and put out a national report around October.
Kehoe says this book keeping administrative stuff can be time consuming, but these days SUNY schools have a little help.
"We've recently purchased a new criminal records software system that was designed for the express purpose of helping colleges and universities to comply with the requirements of the Clery act, so we do our best to automate the process as much as possible so the chance for human error is minimized."
That software system is called IMPACT, and it was designed by Dennis Labriola. He says he wants to "track the bad guys."
Labriola was approached by law enforcement to make a records management system back in the 1980s, and since then IMPACT has expanded to all different kinds of law enforcement offices.
"In the last three years we've done a lot with the SUNYs, campus police being a real important aspect of what we do. When we send our kids to college we want to make sure that they're going to be safe, and we want to make sure that we provide the tools."
Labriola says his software has some key features that help colleges record and report mandated statistics quickly and accurately. He says as a father of two college-age daughters, this is especially important to him.
"It's a way that us as parents can decide which college we want our kids to go to, and gives us kind of a rating as to which ones are safe and which ones are not safe."
But IMPACT isn't limited to recording crime stats. Labriola says it could also help with crime prevention by identifying problem areas on campus, and helping SUNY campuses share information with surrounding towns and villages more efficiently.