Homicide clearance rates have decreased to their lowest level, from 71% in 1980 to around 50% in 2020, according to analyses of FBI data by the Marshall Project and Murder Accountability Project.
In criminal justice, the clearance rate is calculated by dividing the number of crimes that are “cleared” (a charge being laid) by the total number of crimes recorded. Various groups use clearance rates to measure crimes solved by the police.
America is now at risk of becoming the first developed nation where the majority of murders go uncleared, according to Thomas Hargrove, founder of the Murder Accountability Project, which tracks unsolved homicides in the US. Although US police have solved more murders than in any year since 1997, because of the increasing number of homicides, the clearance rate has dramatically declined to a little below 50%.
See the historical trends of cleared murders, new murders, and the murder clearance rate in the chart below – learn more here.
Data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics demonstrates that killings are now less frequently committed by people the victim knew, with growing proportions of homicides being done by strangers.
Alternatively, often in minority communities where trust in the law is lower, officers struggle to get witnesses to talk to them. Also noted is a growing discrepancy in homicide clearance rates according to the race and ethnicity of the victim, with African American victims experiencing the lowest clearance rate.
Declining homicide clearance rates are often the result of the inadequate allocation of resources – detectives, forensic technicians, crime laboratory capacity, and adequate training of personnel. Often a case that may be cleared does not always result in imprisonment.
In previous posts, the Right Wire Report reported on “Crime in America Keeps Going Up.” In other reports, “Blue, Woke, and Big City Crime Keeps Rising” and “Now Mainstream Media Propagandizes, Says Trump-voting Areas are the Source of Rising Crime.”
The data coming from these charts show not only the rise in crime in America but also that killers are now more often getting away with murder. This all started, as seen in the chart above, in the mid-2010-2020, when a shift in the cultural war occurred in many Blue (Democrat) run cities.
Clearly, government policies and cultural changes driven by government are at the source of this recent phenomenon in crime. In the comment section below, give us your take on why crime and getting away with crime are on the rise in America.
By Tom Williams
