Carter says that the new legislation would benefit college campuses because individuals would have a better sense of crime on campus and would be able to hold HUPD accountable for its security policy.

Under the new legislation, incident reports would only be released if an individual asks for them.

“If nobody asks for it,” Herms says, “then nobody is interested and the report will never have to be made public.”

However, Herms says that students should have a vested interest in obtaining detailed crime information.

“I think it’s going to be very healthy for students to take responsibility for their own safety,” Herms says.

Carter agrees that additional disclosure of information is essential for student and community evaluation of policing practices.

“You might get a better sense of how the police have responded and whether they’re doing enough,” Carter says. “No school, college or university wants to be known as a dangerous campus...They don’t have any incentive to be truly forthright.”

Catalano says, however, that sufficient information is already available to the public.

“Carter and Herms do a disservice to the community suggesting that this occurs,” Catalano says. “When someone is arrested for a crime, information pertaining to that incident is available to the public under the current law.”

The only exception to Harvard’s tight-lipped policy is the University’s thorough sexual harassment reporting, which Carter characterizes as “probably the best in the nation.”

Herms concedes that one of his primary motives is to reverse a Harvard policy that replaced union security guards with outsourced non-union guards. By having access to more information about crime across campus, Herms says he hopes to demonstrate a direct correlation between outsourced guards and increased crime.

But Catalano says the incident reports are unlikely to show any such correlation.

“Herms has absolutely no basis for saying that there is any correlation between outsourcing and crime, and we have not seen any correlation,” Catalano says. “Herms is concentrating on one previous system of security at Harvard. Policing has evolved and improved over time. Policing at Harvard now is based on the standards of community policing which is built upon increased numbers of professional police officers who become familiar with an area and its residents.”

—Staff writer Sarah E.F. Milov scan be reached at milov@fas.harvard.edu.