The Clery Act: More Campus Safety Or Just a Wasteful Mandate?

In this week's Pope Center Clarion Call, I consider the Clery Act, which is supposed to give us greater campus safety through federal directives. I'm inclined to think that this is just another instance of political grandstanding that just wastes resources on compliance but does nothing to improve safety. Top-down controls meant to achieve some societal objective almost never work better than, and are usually far inferior to bottom-up initiatives by individuals and organizations. Optimizing campus safety is a spontaneous order phenomenon; federal dictates do not help.