Division of Public Safety initiatives to cut crime on campus may be paying off.
Total crime for September in Penn's patrol zone is down 18 percent between 2005 and 2006.
While there were 114 incidents of crime around Penn - ranging from assault to bicycle theft - in September last year, there were 93 offenses, all of them considered relatively minor by safety officials, in the same month this year.
Specifically, robberies were down, going from nine to six.
Burglaries are the one discouraging figure for the month, rising to 10 from six the previous September. Off-campus housing has been particularly hard-hit by the rise in burglaries in the late-night hours.
City officials were not immediately able to provide comparable statistics for the city as a whole yesterday.
DPS officials say that the substantial drop in overall crime rates can likely be attributed to increased safety provided by additional street lighting installed on and around campus.
Last week, the University City Lighting Consortium inaugurated 300 streetlights and 340 supplemental floodlights that have been installed around the area, which cost over $1 million to put in place.
University President Amy Gutmann allotted DPS an additional $5 million in the spring for lighting and other initiatives, after a student was hit in the leg by a stray bullet.
Both bicycle and general theft - the two most frequent campus crimes - also dropped between this year and last.
Theft of bicycles dropped 51 percent, from 39 incidents to 19.
General theft dropped 33 percent, from 43 incidents to 37.
DPS attributes these figures to the new registry for bicycles and laptops through CampusExpress, which allows students and faculty to enter descriptive information and an assessment of the cost of their valuables into a school-operated archive. The site also lets students buy stronger U-locks for their bicycles.
Another potential explanation for these decreased in crime could be the poor weather and heavy rain that the area experienced for much of September, DPS officials said.
Engineering junior Sarah Casey, who lives off campus, said that while she has not noticed a specific increase in lighting, she feels that her area is safe.
"It's not like there was bad lighting before," she said. "But you do feel like you are safe."
