Developing Useful Transit Related Crime And Incident Data

Transit agencies have an obligation to provide a reasonably safe and secure system for their patrons and employees. Transit management must make decisions regarding the best use of police, security personnel, and other resources to reduce crime and increase the perception of a safe transportation system. This report presents findings about current methods for collecting analyzing and using data on transit-related crime to make decisions on personnel deployment and allocation of security resources. The findings are based on telephone interviews and information collected from 21 transit agencies. These transit agencies use three distinct organizational/management approaches to transit policing and security operations: dedicated transit police department; dedicated transit crime unit within local police force; and contracts with local law enforcement and/or private security companies. This final report includes an assessment of the findings, leading to recommendations for improving the usefulness of transit crime data. The central recommendation of this project is a proposed change in the reporting of national crime statistics to the Federal Transit Administration. Detailed recommendations are presented in the form of a guidelines document--"Guidelines for Transit Crime Data Analysis and Reporting" (Appendix D).