The crimes that are solved and cleared by arrest are declining - but why?

This is the eighth in a series offering data from the FBI’s latest crime reports based on crimes reported to law enforcement. The first was Locations Of Violent Crime-Where Crime Happens.  The second was The Time Of Day For Violent And Property Crimes. The third was Violent Crime Totals By State. The fourth was Violent Crime Victims By Race And Ethnicity-Who’s Victimized Most? The fifth was Are Females Violently Victimized More Than Males? The sixth is Most People Are Violently Victimized By Family Members Or People They Know. The seventh is 10 Percent Of Violent Victimizations Involved A Firearm-Weapons Used During Crime

Crimes Reported

Per the National Crime Victimization Survey from the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the US Department of Justice, only 42 percent of violent crimes are reported to law enforcement. Thirty-two percent of property crimes are reported. The USDOJ uses a national survey (National Crime Victimization Survey) as a gauge for all crimes.

In addition, there are major law enforcement agencies not reporting their crime data to the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System for its 2022 report.

So what you read below from the FBI is a subset of total crime. Total crime is best represented by the National Crime Victimization Survey. See Violent And Property Crimes in The US for an explanation. Both collect and offer crime data differently.

Nevertheless, the numbers below from the FBI are some of the best indicators we have regarding the total number of “reported” crimes and the characteristics of crime.

Crimes cleared by arrest are declining. The question becomes why.

Jeff Asher offers his opinion via Vox (link below) that it’s connected to the declining numbers of police officers quitting or retiring.

Per a police chief Vox interviewed for the article, “Do you think there’s any truth to the sentiment that police are pulling back because they feel overworked, they feel disrespected? And they feel like doing this job is just going to get you in trouble? I mean, what are you hearing?”

“You hit the nail on the head. That is absolutely an issue. They want to ensure that when chaos ensues, they’re going to be judged fairly. And one of the dynamics, if the pendulum swings too far, oftentimes officers will feel, is this worth it?”

Competing Priorities

Thousands of police officers have left the job. On top of that, society is demanding much more from law enforcement. They want cops in every school. They want protection from mass shooters. They want Red Flag (weapon confiscation) laws enforced. Every neighborhood wants the presence of officers regardless of their level of crime.

Solving crimes takes time and it assumes that support systems are in place. We have immense backlogs in testing DNA or rape kits. I’m told that fingerprint analysis is also backlogged. New technologies (i.e., drones, artificial intelligence, facial recognition) are challenged by the ACLU and others.

But I assume that it’s the day-to-day calls for service that are at the heart and soul of competing priorities. Cops are told to engage in community-based policing to establish ties to the community that encourage the flow of information used to solve crimes. But that doesn’t take into account endless demands such as searches for missing people, domestic violence calls, traffic enforcement, plus many additional priorities.

As a former police officer, I once went to a call where a woman ran out of the house with her children upon my arrival and insisted that an intruder was in the basement. No one was in the basement but she and her children were profoundly distraught and begged me to stay long enough to comfort her young kids. Calls backed up. My supervisor wasn’t happy. But how do you leave crying, frightened children? Another time when I interviewed a suspect in a hospital, the nurses pleaded with me to stay because rival gang members were being treated in the emergency ward.

Yes, homicides and other forms of serious violent crimes will get experienced detectives and support. Still, the rest becomes the responsibility of street cops who simply do not have time.

All Arrests Have Dramatically Declined

What few acknowledge is that arrests peaked in 1996 and have been declining ever since. After slightly leveling off in 2014, the decline reoccurs at the beginning of the police use of force protests and plummets thereafter. 

Police Initiated Contacts Fall By 9 Million

The portion of U.S. residents age 16 or older who had experienced contact with the police in the preceding 12 months declined from 26 percent in 2011 to 21 percent in 2015, per the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The decline coincides with the police use of force protests.

The number of residents who had experienced contact with police dropped by more than 9 million people, from 62.9 million to 53.5 million during the period.

From 2011 to 2015, the number of persons who had contact that was police-initiated fell by 8 million, and the number of persons who initiated contact with police fell by 6 million.

A 60 Percent Decline in Searches-Arrests

In 2020, the majority (75%) of U.S. residents whose most recent police contact was a street stop experienced no resulting enforcement action.

Residents who did experience an enforcement action most often received a warning (16%), while being searched or arrested (5%) or given a ticket (3%) was less common.

About 5% of residents were searched or arrested during their street stop in 2020, marking a nearly 60% decline from the 13% searched or arrested in 2018 (emphasis added).

Vox And Crimes Solved

“Asher tells Vox’s daily news podcast, Today, Explained, that murder clearance rates aren’t the only figure that fell: “It was really across the board to some of the lowest levels ever reported for every crime.”

According to Asher’s analysis of the UCR data, “For all violent crimes, the clearance rate went from almost 46 percent in 2019 to 36.7 percent in 2022. The same thing happened with property crimes. Property crime went from a 17 percent clearance rate to a 12 percent clearance rate from 2019 to 2022. And so you look at crime by crime, and with the exception of burglary, every crime has seen really a nosedive in the last three or four years.”

“So why are fewer crimes being solved by police departments? Asher says it’s harder to explain the trend than to describe it. But he thinks the data may offer some insights. “There was a substantial decline in the summer of 2020,” he says. “We can relate the drop in clearance rates to everything that’s happened in American criminal justice, in policing, in attitudes toward police since the murder of George Floyd in May of 2020.”

“Asher also points out that 2020 began an exodus of officers leaving law enforcement. “The majority of big cities had fewer officers in 2022 than they did in 2019,” Asher says. “If you have fewer officers, you have fewer resources to dedicate to solving crime, which means lower clearance rates. And we do have lots of research that shows that.”

Data From The FBI

There are two definitions used for the chart below from the FBI (latest data), crimes cleared by arrest and crimes cleared by exceptional means (i.e., the suspected offender is incarcerated in another state, they know who he is but an arrest has not been made).

The majority of “reported” crimes do not end in arrest. The issue gets muddier when we understand that most violent crime victims know their offender thus victim cooperation becomes a crucial ingredient in solving crimes “if” they are reported (most are not).

My only summarization is that it’s obvious that the great majority of “reported” crimes are not solved (or cleared).



Conclusions

There is an observation that big city crime is decreasing in 2023 and police chiefs are suggesting that they are reengaging in proactive policing while focusing on those with violent histories.

The contrast is that violent crime increased by 44 percent in 2022 per the latest data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The crime decrease in big cities could be nothing more than a regression to the mean (average) that all crime statistics experience. Nothing stays the same. All crime increases or decreases for reasons we cannot fully articulate.

Everyone from police chiefs to social workers and violence interrupters are claiming credit for big city crime reductions when it may be nothing more than the natural ebb and flow of crime. Per the Major Cities Chiefs Association, homicides increased by 50 percent and aggravated assaults increased by 36 percent, from 2019-2022. That growth can’t continue. Big city crime would inevitably decrease.

But with thousands of police officers quitting or retiring, and with more duties being heaped upon those remaining, and with the stereotyping of over a million police employees for the actions of a few involved in the illegal use of force, we get fewer arrests, less proactive policing, and a greater risk to public safety.

Maybe it’s time to understand that we ask too much from too few and provide the resources cops need to solve crimes.