Crime clearance rate

This article is about the criminological term. For the pharmacological term, see Clearance (pharmacology).

In criminal justice, a clearance rate is a measure of how many crimes have been solved in a specific geographical region during a specific time period, usually given as a percentage. Various groups use clearance rates as a measure of crimes solved by the police.

Formula

A clearance rate is calculated by dividing the number of crimes cleared by the total number of crimes reported and multiplying the result by 100. A crime is cleared when police make an arrest and a criminal charge has been laid or the case is otherwise closed, such as when police have enough evidence to make an arrest but cannot because the suspect is dead.[1]

Limitations

Clearance rates can be problematic for measuring the performance of police organizations and for comparing various police organizations. This is because police organizations may measure clearance rates differently. For example, each police organization may have a different method of recording when a "crime" has occurred and different criteria for determining when a crime has been "cleared." A given police organization may appear to have a much better clearance rate because of its calculation methodology.[2]

Jerome Skolnick found that focusing on clearance rates encourages the police to focus on boosting clearance rates rather than investigating crimes impartially.[3] Such focus on clearance rates may result in effort being expended to attribute crimes (correctly or incorrectly) to a criminal, which may not result in actual offenders being charged for their crimes.[3]

By country

Homicide clearance rate differs between countries, with around 98% in Finland and around 24% in Trinidad and Tobago, a direct comparison is limited due to differing definitions and criminal justice procedures.[4]

United States

The clearance rate for reported crimes varies by type of crime. For 2023 in the USA the arrest rate was 47.5% for murder, 42.9% for aggravated assault, 35.4% for shoplifting, 24.9% for robbery, 24.3% for embezzlement, 22.2% for arson, 12.0% for rape, 11.9% for burglary and 6.6% for motor vehicle theft.[6]

Homicide clearance rate in the United States of America has been decreasing from 95% in 1962 to 54% in 2020.[7] Some U.S. police forces have been criticized for overuse of "exceptional clearance", which is intended to classify as "cleared" cases where probable cause to arrest a suspect exists, but police are unable to do so for reasons outside their control (such as death or incarceration in a foreign country).[8]

See also

References

  1. ^ Arntfield, Michael (April 19, 2022). How to Solve a Cold Case: And Everything Else You Wanted to Know About Catching Killers (Epub ed.). Toronto: HarperCollins. p. 29. ISBN 978-1-4434-5938-9. Retrieved 22 February 2026.
  2. ^ Greene, Jack R. (2007). The Encyclopedia of Police Science, Volume 1. Oxfordshire, United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis. p. 907. ISBN 978-0415970006. Retrieved 4 August 2019.
  3. ^ a b Skolnick, Jerome H. (1966). Justice without Trial: Law Enforcement in Democratic Society. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. pp. 180–181.
  4. ^ Liem, Marieke; Suonpää, Karoliina; Lehti, Martti; Kivivuori, Janne; Granath, Sven; Walser, Simone; Killias, Martin (30 March 2018). "Homicide clearance in Western Europe". European Journal of Criminology. 16 (1). SAGE Publications: 81–101. doi:10.1177/1477370818764840. hdl:1887/64091. ISSN 1477-3708. PMC 6328993. PMID 30675132.
  5. ^ Lopez, German (6 July 2025). "Nearly Half of America's Murderers Get Away With It". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 10 July 2025. "Source: Jeff Asher, F.B.I"
  6. ^ Walinchus, Lucia; Smyser, Katy; Murphy, Joe (10 January 2025). "Less than 4% of sex crimes end in conviction, NBC News investigation shows". NBC News. Retrieved 20 June 2025.
  7. ^ Cook, Philip J.; Mancik, Ashley (26 January 2024). "The Sixty-Year Trajectory of Homicide Clearance Rates: Toward a Better Understanding of the Great Decline". Annual Review of Criminology. 7 (1). Annual Reviews: 59–83. doi:10.1146/annurev-criminol-022422-122744. ISSN 2572-4568.
  8. ^ Mark Greenblatt; Mark Fahey; Bernice Yeung (November 16, 2018). "Case Cleared: The Consequences Of 'Exceptional Clearance'".
  • Wesley Lowery; Kimbriell Kelly; Ted Mellnik; Steven Rich (2018-06-06). "Where Murders Go Unsolved". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2019-10-07. - "The Post has mapped more than 52,000 homicides in major American cities over the past decade and found that across the country, there are areas where murder is common but arrests are rare."
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.