Alcohol Abuse and Campus Crime

Crime is best understood as illegal behavior located within the social interactions of offenders and targets in specific social spaces. The contemporary college campus presents a unique set of crime risks. Although serious crime is relatively rare on university campuses, alcohol abuse (the strategic use of alcohol consumption to reach an intoxicated state) is a common practice of some students. College students—many of whom are not yet 21 years old and therefore not legally permitted to consume alcohol—use alcohol intoxication to celebrate events, to lower inhibitions, and to facilitate romantic and sexual encounters. This entry provides an overview of the risks of heavy, episodic drinking on campus; sexual victimization on campus; intimate partner violence; and strategies to reduce the harms related to alcohol abuse on campus.

Risks. Although college students use alcohol to enhance intimate communication and to amplify opportunities for fun and adventure, collective intoxication raises the risk and probability of certain criminal acts. For example, there is an association between alcohol use and violence. Researchers suggest that college students who routinely drink to intoxication are at an elevated risk to be perpetrators and victims of physical violence. As one might expect, campus environments that promote heavy alcohol use are likely to have above average rates of physical assault, vandalism, and public disorder offenses. Furthermore, studies suggest that higher rates of nonviolent property crime are associated with high-risk alcohol use on campus. The association between alcohol use and property offenses may owe, in part, to the fact that campus nightlife draws students away from their homes and property, making them more vulnerable to burglary.

Social drinking events (e.g., house parties, street festivals, tailgating, bar gatherings) may increase the likelihood of criminal victimization for a variety of reasons. A notable crime theory, the routine activities approach, predicts that crime is likely to occur when motivated offenders, suitable targets, and the lack of capable guardianship converge in time and space. A street festival, then, contains significant risk since motivated offenders (e.g., intoxicated, less inhibited partygoers) are competing with other intoxicated students for limited resources (e.g., alcohol and potential romantic and sexual partners) under conditions of relatively low guardianship (i.e., few authority figures present to discourage conflict). The combination of intoxicated students competing for resources in a context lacking in social control can result in physical altercations and aggression.

Sexual Victimization. One of the greatest crime risks on college campuses is the risk of sexual victimization in the drinking scene. This particular form of victimization has received much attention in recent years from students, parents, activists, celebrities, filmmakers, and politicians. Research suggests that as many as one in five college women will be a victim of sexual assault during her college years. However, measures of the rate of sexual victimization among college students have been subject to scrutiny. The definitions of rape and sexual assault researchers employ can influence their measurements, and critics have questioned the validity of the definitions used in some of the most prominent studies of the early 2000s. Still, even more conservative estimates suggest that sexual victimization on college campuses is a widespread social problem.

Since sexual victimization often occurs in the college drinking scene or following a drinking event, questions surrounding the way students perceive the relationship between alcohol and sex have emerged as central to the issue of sexual victimization on college campuses. Just as with other campus crimes in the drinking scene, sexual victimization often occurs in the context of motivated offenders competing with other students for limited resources (in this case, sexual partners) with few capable guardians present. Given that victims in many cases are intoxicated in campus sexual assaults, research suggests that offenders may seek to identify heavily intoxicated individuals who they perceive to be the most suitable targets. To further compound this problem, research has found that a significant percentage of rapists become repeat offenders, thus suggesting that many offenders go undetected by law enforcement.

Efforts to reduce these crimes have pointed to hookup culture as contributing to the unique risks of sexual victimization in the campus drinking scene. Hookup culture includes the norms, rituals, language, and social practices that guide the casual romantic or sexual coupling that emerges out of the campus party scene. One major component of hookup culture on campuses is that it is normative for students to use alcohol as a means to lower their inhibitions and become more comfortable with having sex with the people they meet or spend time with at parties, bars, or other drinking events. Furthermore, students may be encouraged or pressured by their cohorts to find sexual partners while in the drinking scene and to have sex with those partners while intoxicated. This clearly poses a challenge to identifying and preventing sexual victimization in the drinking scene as many of the previctimization warning signs can appear to be normal interactions between consenting adults. The effectiveness of perhaps the most prominent programming effort to reduce sexual victimization on campus—bystander intervention training—is especially challenged by the norms of hookup culture.

Bystander Intervention Training. Bystander intervention training typically aims to teach students how to recognize previctimization warning signs and, in situations they perceive as risky, to intervene to prevent an assault from occurring. However, the norms of the college drinking scene may often impede intervention. Students may be unsure if a perceived potential offender intends to cause harm, if a perceived potential victim is in need of assistance, or which strategy they should employ to mitigate risk after it is identified. This uncertainty may be amplified when the potential bystander is intoxicated. Some movements to reduce sexual victimization, however, have drawn attention to the aspects of campus drinking culture and hookup culture that contribute to the perpetuation of myths about sexual assault. For example, many activists have sought to raise awareness about factors that preclude consent (e.g., if the victim is intoxicated, if the victim has been coerced). Activists have also sought to challenge victim-blaming tactics (e.g., asking how much the victim had to drink, asking what the victim was wearing) and to discredit exaggerated claims of high rates of false reporting.

Sexual victimization has become a major concern for campus safety officials and a significant consideration for university public relations and recruitment practices. Although debates over the prevalence of the problem continue, so do criticisms of institutional responses to it. Attempts to confront this issue have emerged in music, film, political statements (including statements from President Barack Obama), and other mediums. However, although sexual victimization in the college drinking scene has received a great deal of attention in recent years, other forms of interpersonal victimization have largely gone unacknowledged.

Intimate Partner Violence. One of the least acknowledged and least studied forms of campus victimization is intimate partner violence. Intimate partner violence on campus may also be connected to the norms and rituals that produce, and are reproduced by, the college drinking culture. This form of violence is distinct from other types of crime due to the ongoing relationship and shared lives of the victims and perpetrators. This unique context makes it less likely that victims will contact police and more likely to be underreported. Even so, relationship violence has been found to be a prevalent problem among college dating partners. This includes psychological, sexual, and both minor and severe physical violence. Research suggests that more than 20% of college women have experienced sexual or physical abuse within a dating relationship. Further, the problem of dating violence is worsened by the consumption of alcohol.

The college drinking culture functions to create more motivated offenders, as well as more suitable targets, of relationship violence. Investigators in the field of intimate partner violence have reported alcohol use as a consistent characteristic of men who abuse their partners. Additionally, studies have found that heavy drinking and illicit drug use are risk factors of relationship violence victimization. Perpetrators of abuse may be more likely to commit violent acts against their partners while intoxicated due to the perceptions of what college students consider acceptable behavior while intoxicated. For example, an intoxicated perpetrator’s violent behavior may be excused by both the target of the crime (in this case, the relationship partner) and by any potential capable guardians because the alcohol is perceived as the cause of the violence instead of the perpetrator.

Victims of relationship abuse who point to alcohol as the source of their partner’s abusive behavior may be more likely to stay in the relationship, thus leading to further victimization. Although the connection between risk of victimization and alcohol consumption is less clear, it is possible that intoxicated partners are more suitable targets of violence because they are not as capable of defending themselves. Victims of abuse may be more likely to use alcohol as a coping mechanism, which can in turn lead to reoccurring victimization.

Alcohol consumption on the victim’s part may lead capable guardians to blame the victim for their abusive partner’s behavior, leading to a decrease in social support for the victim. Additionally, because surveys on the effects of alcohol consumption have revealed that many college students report having been in an argument while intoxicated, arguments between partners that are psychologically or verbally abusive may go unrecognized as abuse by both capable guardians and by victims. Bystanders may assume that a couple arguing at a social event in which alcohol is present is insignificant and therefore not appropriate for intervention.

As the presence of social support has been found to increase the chances of a victim exiting an abusive relationship and lead to more positive mental health outcomes for victims, the role of alcohol may worsen the effects of relationship abuse on victims. Further, the college drinking culture can lead to an increase in social support for abusive partners, and their behaviors may be excused or even viewed as acceptable by peers who blame the intoxicated victim. The specific context of the college drinking scene has the potential to motivate more perpetrators of relationship abuse, create more suitable targets of intimate partner violence, decrease the likelihood of a capable guardian intervening, and exacerbate the consequences of being a victim of relationship abuse.

Combating Risks. In summary, there is a clear relationship between alcohol use and some forms of criminal victimization in campus life. As seen through the lens of the routine activities approach, the less inhibited— and sometimes chaotic—nature of collective intoxication temporarily increases the pool of motivated offenders and raises target suitability. College drinkers often report feeling less committed to prosocial norms when they are intoxicated and are more likely to behave in aggressive ways that are less socially acceptable in the sober interactions of everyday life. Furthermore, the college drinking culture promotes behavioral patterns that reduce capable guardianship. For example, the social drinking script includes the potential for spontaneous (or loosely planned) sexual coupling encounters during a drinking episode.

These encounters may result in intoxicated students leaving a social event together. When intoxicated students physically separate themselves from sources of social support and capable guardianship, the potential for coercive sexual encounters increases. Moreover, research suggests that college drinking culture provides systematic absolution for students who exhibit antisocial behavior while under the influence of alcohol. Thus, college drinkers may be less likely to hold one another accountable for aggressive acts (e.g., physical violence or verbal hostility toward intimate partners) if they interpret the behavior as temporary, episodic, and caused by alcohol consumption.

Campus life administrators can combat the constellation of risks presented by college drinking culture by educating incoming students about the dangers existing in routine social practices, by implementing a campus-wide bystander intervention initiative, by holding students accountable for the criminal acts they commit on campus, and by generating a campus discussion around the best practices for identifying and reporting sexual victimization and intimate partner violence on campus.

Thomas Vander Ven, Leah Butler, and Jaclyn L. Lynch
See also Alcohol and Aggression; Intimate Partner Violence; Sexual Offending; Victims of Crime

Further Readings: DeKeseredy, W., & Kelly, K. (1993). The incidence and prevalence of woman abuse in Canadian university and college dating relationships. Canadian Journal of Sociology/Cahiers canadiens de sociologie, 2, 137-159.

DuRant, R., Champion, H., Wolfson, M., Morrow, O., McCoy, T., D’Agostino, R. B. Jr., . . . Mitra, A. (2007). Date fighting experiences among college students: Are they associated with other health-risk behaviors? Journal of American College Health, 55(5), 291-296. Felson, M., & Eckert, M. (2016). Crime and everyday life (5th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Fisher, B. S., Cullen, F. T., & Turner, M. (2000). The sexual victimization of college women. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice and Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Pugh, B., Ningard, H., Vander Ven, T., & Butler, L. (2016). Victim ambiguity: Bystander intervention and sexual assault in the college drinking scene. Deviant Behavior, 37, 401-418.