Sheet 6: The Myth of Insecurity along Trails

Fact: It is simply untrue that trails bring crime to a community.
Trails tend to be self-policing and can actually help deter crime by bringing more people to an otherwise isolated area. The following items reinforce this view:

• Law enforcement agencies along the Illinois Prairie Path were contacted about crime statistics along this trail. However, most departments do not keep separate crime statistics since they were not significant. Police officers contacted indicated that a majority of incidents along the trail were personal injury calls.¹

• The incidence rates for major crimes (such as mugging, assault, forcible rape, and murder) on or along 372 trails surveyed were dramatically lower than the national rate for the same location categories--urban, suburban, and rural. Also, the incidence rate of minor crimes was very low. For example, only 5% of the 372 trails reported incidences of trespassing, 24% reported littering, and 26% reported graffiti.²

• A sheriff in Wisconsin indicated that he felt "the trail does not encourage crime, and in fact, probably deters crime since there are many people, tourists and local citizens using the trail for many activities at various hours of the day.³

• Demographically, people who use trails tend to be the same as the people living near the trail.⁴

• Most problems reported by nearby landowners are considered minor: unleashed pets, illegal motor vehicle use, and litter.⁵

• There is not a greater incidence of burglaries and/or vandalism of homes along trails.⁶

¹Police departments along the Illinois Prairie Path, Interviewed by Sylvia Kellogg and Jack Udelhofen, Illinois, June-August 1997.

²The Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, Rail-Trails and Safe Communities: The Experience on 372 Trails, (Washington, D.C.: Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, January 1998), 4, 5, 8.

³Ibid., [same pages as the preceding note.]

⁴National Park Service, Rivers, Trails, and Conservation Assistance Program, The Impact of Rail-Trails: A Study of Users and Nearby Property Owners from Three Trails, (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, February, 1992), i, ii.

⁵Ibid., [same pages as the preceding note.]

⁶Seattle Engineering Department, Office for Planning, Burke-Gilman Trail's Effect of Property Values and Crime, (Seattle Engineering Department, May 1987), 2.