criminal justice Criminal justice is the delivery of justice to those who have been accused of committing crimes. The criminal justice system is a series of government agencies and institutions. Goals include the rehabilitation of offenders, preventing other ...

, clearance rate is calculated by dividing the number of crimes that are "cleared", a

criminal charge A criminal charge is a formal accusation made by a governmental authority (usually a public prosecutor or the police) asserting that somebody has committed a crime. A charging document, which contains one or more criminal charges or counts, can t ...

being laid, or

convicted In law, a conviction is the determination by a court of law that a defendant is guilty of a crime. A conviction may follow a guilty plea that is accepted by the court, a jury trial in which a verdict of guilty is delivered, or a trial by jud ...

by the total number of crimes recorded. Various groups use clearance rates as a measure of

crime In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a State (polity), state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definiti ...

s solved by the police. Clearance rates can be problematic for measuring the performance of police services and for comparing various police services. This is because a police force may employ a different way of measuring clearance rates. For example, each police force 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 force may appear to have a much better clearance rate because of its calculation methodology. In system conflict theory, it is argued that clearance rates cause the police to focus on ''appearing ''to solve crimes (generating high clearance rate scores) rather than actually solving crimes. Further focus on clearance rates may result in effort being expended to attribute crimes (correctly or incorrectly) to a criminal, which may not result in retribution, compensation, rehabilitation or deterrence.

Homicide clearance rate

Homicide Homicide is an act in which a person causes the death of another person. A homicide requires only a Volition (psychology), volitional act, or an omission, that causes the death of another, and thus a homicide may result from Accident, accidenta ...

clearance rate in the USA has been decreasing from 93% in 1962 to 54% in 2020. 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). While 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

procedures.

References

External links

* {{Cite news , newspaper=

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...

, url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/investigations/where-murders-go-unsolved/?noredirect=on , date=2018-06-06 , accessdate=2019-10-07 , title=Where Murders Go Unsolved , author1=Wesley Lowery , author2= Kimbriell Kelly , author3=Ted Mellnik , author4=Steven Rich - "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." Criminology Law enforcement Crime statistics Ratios Social statistics indicators

Homicide clearance rate

See also

References

External links