Thank you for diving into this topic! There continues to be inconsistency and confusion among/across law enforcement agencies when it comes to exceptional clearance for sexual assault cases. The folks at BJA did a deep dive on this with 2019 NIBRS data, and it showed that some states are clearing up to about 40% of their rape cases exceptionally, which guarantees that they are (a) doing it wrong and/or (b) disproportionately rejecting viable cases for prosecution. I can't find the online report now; it may have been removed.
Some agencies misunderstand the victim non-cooperation aspect, and clear cases as exceptional any time the victim doesn't return their calls (but before an actual investigation was completed). EVAWI offers an excellent source of expertise and perspective on this topic; this link is for a training course, but you can also just download the training module as a PDF. https://evawintl.org/courses/evawi-10-clearance-methods-for-sexual-assault-cases-2/
"Clearance rates are made up of a denominator encompassing all the crimes that occurred in a given year and a numerator encompassing the number of crimes cleared in that year regardless of when they occurred."
While the above clearance calculation method definitely works best for homicides, which often have long timelines in terms of clearances, for most other crimes the "best" numerator would be the cleared subset of crimes that occurred in the year of occurrence. Further, even for homicides, I'd argue for this approach once the agency is reporting about anything except the current year.
Because frankly, using EVERY cleared crime as the numerator is just law enforcement putting its best spin on the data, because the clearance rate for the current year has nowhere to go but UP using this method, while clearance rates for prior years would (or at least, SHOULD) be forever frozen. But, I suspect that some law enforcement agencies basically double-count these old clearances, so a 2023 murder cleared in 2025 would raise the clearance rate for 2025 AND show as a cleared murder in 2023 historical crime data.
Personally, I would recommend that large law enforcement agencies publish BOTH clearance rates for homicides, along with an explanation of the difference.
Thank you for diving into this topic! There continues to be inconsistency and confusion among/across law enforcement agencies when it comes to exceptional clearance for sexual assault cases. The folks at BJA did a deep dive on this with 2019 NIBRS data, and it showed that some states are clearing up to about 40% of their rape cases exceptionally, which guarantees that they are (a) doing it wrong and/or (b) disproportionately rejecting viable cases for prosecution. I can't find the online report now; it may have been removed.
Some agencies misunderstand the victim non-cooperation aspect, and clear cases as exceptional any time the victim doesn't return their calls (but before an actual investigation was completed). EVAWI offers an excellent source of expertise and perspective on this topic; this link is for a training course, but you can also just download the training module as a PDF. https://evawintl.org/courses/evawi-10-clearance-methods-for-sexual-assault-cases-2/
"Clearance rates are made up of a denominator encompassing all the crimes that occurred in a given year and a numerator encompassing the number of crimes cleared in that year regardless of when they occurred."
While the above clearance calculation method definitely works best for homicides, which often have long timelines in terms of clearances, for most other crimes the "best" numerator would be the cleared subset of crimes that occurred in the year of occurrence. Further, even for homicides, I'd argue for this approach once the agency is reporting about anything except the current year.
Because frankly, using EVERY cleared crime as the numerator is just law enforcement putting its best spin on the data, because the clearance rate for the current year has nowhere to go but UP using this method, while clearance rates for prior years would (or at least, SHOULD) be forever frozen. But, I suspect that some law enforcement agencies basically double-count these old clearances, so a 2023 murder cleared in 2025 would raise the clearance rate for 2025 AND show as a cleared murder in 2023 historical crime data.
Personally, I would recommend that large law enforcement agencies publish BOTH clearance rates for homicides, along with an explanation of the difference.
Hi Jeff: Very good article. Thanks. Len.