Stories about cold cases—unsolved crimes, especially murders—have long filled the airwaves of TV, streaming and now podcasting. Tragically, in a nation this large with all too many violent criminals, the creators of such shows have never struggled to find content. Now, however, such shows have a surfeit of dreadful material to choose from.
That is because, for the first time, more murder cases in America are going unsolved than solved.
After steadily declining for decades, the rate at which murders are solved or "cleared" has officially fallen below 50 percent. Some cities have far lower clearance rates. Chicago’s murder clearance rate has dropped below 40 percent. Oakland’s rate is 27 percent.
This decline in the murder clearance rate has been fairly steady despite amazing advantages in crime-solving technology, including the DNA revolution. Starting in the 1960s, the rate at which murder cases were solved has slid steadily. It has decreased from above 90 percent in the 1960s to 71 percent in 1980 to just under 50 percent in 2020. The last figure comes from two separate analyses of FBI data by independent non-profits. By comparison, Germany still clears well over 90 percent of its murder cases. Police are especially struggling in the wake of a sharp increase in homicides in the last three years.
In fact, the murder clearance rate is undoubtedly worse than what’s officially reported due to manipulation of the data. According to the FBI, a homicide can be cleared by arrest or other means. This latter “exceptional means” includes the death of a suspect, another jurisdiction’s refusal to extradite someone, or prosecutors refusing to press charges. A more accurate benchmark for murder clearance rates is the arrest rate. Using this gauge, one professor found that from 2016 to 2020, the percentage of murders in Chicago involving any type of weapon resulting in at least one arrest was just 33 percent. In Durham, North Carolina, between 2017 and 2021, just 41 percent of gun-related homicide cases led to at least one arrest. Left-wing National Public Radio admitted recently, “even some cities now touting modestly improved murder clearance rates, such as Chicago, are really just artificially boosting their clearance numbers through that ‘exceptional means’ clause.”
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