One limitation with the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program’s Supplementary Homicide Report (SHR) is its failure to indicate whether a particular murder has been cleared. As a result, researchers using the SHR must rely on proxy measures to study clearance at the national level. Currently, the UCR Program is undergoing a large-scale conversion from its traditional summary system and SHR to the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). One benefit of NIBRS is that it enables law enforcement agencies to report incident-level clearance information. Although NIBRS provides a new and important source of clearance information, researchers have largely ignored these data. The present study provides an initial examination of the NIBRS murder clearance data. Specifically, these data are used both to evaluate clearance predictors and to assess the validity of the proxy clearance measures previously used with the SHR.

Very little attention has been devoted to studying factors associated with how quickly murders are cleared. This dearth of knowledge is mainly due to a lack of available data, especially at the national level. Currently the Uniform Crime Reporting Program is undergoing a large-scale conversion from its traditional summary system form of data collection to the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). One benefit of NIBRS is that it enables law enforcement agencies to report incident-level clearance information, including the incident and clearance dates. The present study utilizes NIBRS data to compare characteristics of homicides that are cleared quickly with those cleared over a longer period of time and those that are not cleared. Findings from this exploratory study confirm the conventional belief that murders are cleared quickly if at all, as a large drop in the percentage of cleared cases is observed one week after a murder occurs. The present research also suggests that incident characteristics play a dynamic role in predicting not only whether a murder is cleared, but how quickly. These findings provide new insights for studying clearance and suggest policy implications.

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Race is integral to the functioning and ideological underpinnings of marketplace actions yet remains undertheorized in marketing. To understand and transform the insidious ways in which race operates, the authors examine its impact in marketplaces and how these effects are shaped by intersecting forms of systemic oppression. They introduce critical race theory (CRT) to the marketing community as a useful framework for understanding consumers, consumption, and contemporary marketplaces. They outline critical theory traditions as utilized in marketing and specify the particular role of CRT as a lens through which scholars can understand marketplace dynamics. The authors delineate key CRT tenets and how they may shape the way scholars conduct research, teach, and influence practice in the marketing discipline. To clearly highlight CRT’s overall potential as a robust analytical tool in marketplace studies, the authors elaborate on the application of artificial intelligence to consumption markets. This analysis demonstrates how CRT can support an enhanced understanding of the role of race in markets and lead to a more equitable version of the marketplace than what currently exists. Beyond mere procedural modifications, applying CRT to marketplace studies mandates a paradigm shift in how marketplace equity is understood and practiced.

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