Data analyzed by the organization Murder Accountability Project (MAP) revealed that the U.S. murder “clearance rate,” which reflects the proportion of total homicides solved by police, dropped to the lowest point ever on record in 2020.
Whereas the FBI reported over 90 percent of homicides were solved in the mid 1960s, that number has continuously declined over the decades, dropping sharply between 2015 and 2020, to an all-time low of just above 50 percent.
"We're on the verge of being the first developed nation where the majority of homicides go uncleared," MAP founder Thomas Hargrove explained to the Guardian.
In order for police to meet the criteria of “clearing” a crime, such as a homicide, law-enforcement agents must arrest and charge at least one suspect with the wrongdoing.
The science behind clearing rates can be murky.
Data collected by the FBI revealed that many law-enforcement agencies cleared hundreds of murders in 2020 by “exceptional means,” which refers to cases in which police believe they have enough evidence for an arrest but were unable to make one. The failure to produce an arrest could be because the alleged perpetrator may have died or been extradited, for instance.
Hargrove believes that the lack of governmental databases tracking and monitoring homicides is obstructing Americans’ ability to appreciate the full extent of the crisis.
This is of particular importance to intercity jurisdictions – such as Oakland, Indianapolis, and Baltimore – where murders of black men are the least likely to result in an arrest. According to some studies, homicides of “minority” men are somewhere between 15-to-30 percent less likely to result in an arrest.
Those cities experienced a wave of anti-cop sentiment in 2020 following murder of George Floyd, resulting in a reduced funding in some cases and a lack of cooperation among witnesses.
"You hear every cop saying, 'We can't do better because they don't cooperate,'" retired homicide detective John Skaggs, who now trains officers across the US, told the Guardian.
However, not all see the declining clearance rate as a singularly worrisome issue. Philip Cook, a research at the University of Chicago, believes that lowering clearance rates may be the result of superior policing and judicial standards alongside a misuse of public resources.
“It also could be that the standards for making an arrest have gone up and some of the tricks they were using in 1965 are no longer available,” Cook told the Marshall Project, a watchdog organization that advocates for criminal justice reform.
Still, contrary to calls from defund activists, MAP advocates investing more heavily in law enforcement to improve clearance rates.
MAP “firmly believes declining homicide clearance rates are the result of inadequate allocation of resources — detectives, forensic technicians, crime laboratory capacity, and adequate training of personnel," Hargrove added.
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