Hey, Jeff. I believe you talked about the issue of lag in clearance rates - as I understood it, crimes can take a while to clear, so the clearances may be partly last year's crimes. (If I bungled this it's all on me). Given the large drop in reported crimes in 2024, this would mean a smaller denominator. Could this mean for all intents and purposes the clearance rate went DOWN?
I've looked into this data myself, and the largest driver seems to be the mix of people involved. Gun homicides between young males, especially Black males, have the lowest clearest rate, and those have grown as a share of all homicides over the last 5, 10 pr 20 years, while other types have mostly fallen.
So my guess is the homicide mix is changing, since that's what usually drives shorter-term changes, but it could also be policing techniques. Social media, in particular, is a gold-mine for evidence gathering and maybe police are learning to use that effectively.
As a police officer decades ago, I was surprised by the number of "somewhat" serious crimes that were assigned to me to investigate. Per the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we lost approximately 25,000 local police personnel before slightly rebounding thus I assume that this had an impact on crimes solved, see https://www.crimeinamerica.net/the-united-states-lost-over-25000-local-police-personnel/.
There are a ton of crimes detectives don't want and there are a considerable amount of crimes that are "solved" by victims or witnesses (most violent crimes involve offenders known to the victim per BJS).
If I'm a cop and the victim tells me that an ex-boyfriend assaulted her, it's an easy solve as long as I can find the offender.
Hey, Jeff. I believe you talked about the issue of lag in clearance rates - as I understood it, crimes can take a while to clear, so the clearances may be partly last year's crimes. (If I bungled this it's all on me). Given the large drop in reported crimes in 2024, this would mean a smaller denominator. Could this mean for all intents and purposes the clearance rate went DOWN?
Wondering what you think accounts for the rise is clearance rates? Could AI surveillance be having an impact?
Jeff said it in the article: clearance rates tend to rise when crime counts fall.
I've looked into this data myself, and the largest driver seems to be the mix of people involved. Gun homicides between young males, especially Black males, have the lowest clearest rate, and those have grown as a share of all homicides over the last 5, 10 pr 20 years, while other types have mostly fallen.
So my guess is the homicide mix is changing, since that's what usually drives shorter-term changes, but it could also be policing techniques. Social media, in particular, is a gold-mine for evidence gathering and maybe police are learning to use that effectively.
As a police officer decades ago, I was surprised by the number of "somewhat" serious crimes that were assigned to me to investigate. Per the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we lost approximately 25,000 local police personnel before slightly rebounding thus I assume that this had an impact on crimes solved, see https://www.crimeinamerica.net/the-united-states-lost-over-25000-local-police-personnel/.
There are a ton of crimes detectives don't want and there are a considerable amount of crimes that are "solved" by victims or witnesses (most violent crimes involve offenders known to the victim per BJS).
If I'm a cop and the victim tells me that an ex-boyfriend assaulted her, it's an easy solve as long as I can find the offender.