Majority of students broke law last term, study finds

Academics may be suspicious that their students are engaging in plagiarism but a new study reveals that this is the least of their criminal behaviour.

A campus crime survey of more than 1,200 undergraduates across the UK found that students had an exaggerated fear of becoming crime victims, but that their main concern should be their own lapses in behaviour. Almost 60 per cent confessed to having committed a minor criminal offence during the previous term.

Half the students admitted being drunk and disorderly, and nearly 30 per cent had used drugs. More than 11 per cent had been responsible for vandalism, graffiti or minor damage to property, 7 per cent had physically attacked someone they knew, 4 per cent had physically attacked a stranger, and 4 per cent confessed to shoplifting.

Neil Selwyn, senior lecturer in Cardiff University's School of Social Sciences, said: "I was surprised how sanguine the students were about it.

There was a lack of responsibility for their actions, and no shame or regret.

"Many students reported being involved in assaults, causing criminal damage and petty theft almost with a sense of inevitability - blaming drunkenness, peer pressure and the lack of parental discipline while at university as justification for their behaviour."

Dr Selwyn said this generation should be more aware of their actions, with the advent of moral education and citizenship classes in schools. The most likely perpetrators were male students, he said.

"Females were less likely to engage in these sorts of behaviours and were quite disdainful of male students urinating everywhere and getting into fights."