Adjusting Rates of Homicide Clearance by Arrest for Investigation Difficulty

Abstract

Scholars have criticized the use of homicide clearance rates to measure police performance, as many incident-and jurisdiction-level characteristics beyond police control influence these rates. The current study estimated adjusted measures and rates of homicide arrest clearance, accounting for jurisdictional and incident characteristics related to investigation difficulty, for 85 agencies. Comparing agencies' raw and adjusted measures indicates that 16% would be miscategorized as being above or below average in performance if the assessment of performance used raw rates. Adjusted homicide clearance rates, while not a singular indicator of overall success, offer a better police agency performance measure than raw rates.

Institutionalizing inequality in the courts: Decomposing racial and ethnic disparities in detention, conviction, and sentencing*

“…Likewise, we include police agency dummy variables, including Miami Beach, Miami Dade, and other police agencies, with the Miami Police Department serving as the reference category. Since police agencies may differ in the quality and quantity of evidence they generally gather in criminal investigations (Roberts, 2015), these dummy variables might help to capture broad evidentiary differences. We include police agency variables in our pretrial detention and conviction models but omit them from our sentencing models as exclusion restrictions.…”

“…Since exclusion restrictions must be theoretically and substantively justified (Bushway et al., 2007; Hernán & Robins, 2006, 2017; Labrecque & Swanson, 2018), we used the literature and our knowledge of Miami's criminal justice process to select appropriate exclusion restrictions. We argue that the arresting agency helps to capture differences in the quality of evidence that might be related to conviction since some research has demonstrated differences in the evidentiary collection between law enforcement agencies (Roberts, 2015), but once convicted, the arresting agency should not influence incarceration decisions. Additionally, there are police agency differences in Miami‐Dade County in regard to their witness policy, with some departments more heavily relying on officer witnesses (Epstein, Leen, & Getter, 2014).…”

“I Suck at Everything”: Crime, Arrest, and the Generality of Failure

“…So if committing crime is not all that hard to do, it might logically follow that one should find it is pretty easy to get away with most criminal activity. This idea is confirmed by research demonstrating that clearance rates for a wide variety of crimes—even really serious ones like armed robbery and homicide—are far from 100 percent (Doerner and Doerner, 2012; Roberts, 2014). Even for crimes like driving while intoxicated—an offense that carries extremely stiff penalties all around the country (Yao, Johnson, and Beck, 2014)—research has indicated that the odds of getting caught can be upwards of 1 in 200 (Beitel, Sharp, and Glauz, 2000).…”

From Murder to Imprisonment: Mapping the Flow of Homicide Cases—A Systematic Review

“…Some studies report drug-or gang-related homicides to be associated with lower clearance level (Alderden & Lavery, 2007;Alexander, 2012;Braga et al, 2019;Litwin, 2002Litwin, , 2004Pastia et al, 2017;Petersen, 2017b;Puckett & Lundman, 2003;Trussler, 2010;Xu, 2008), whereas other studies report higher clearance rates among this subtype (Adcock, 2001;Jiao, 2007;Litwin & Xu, 2007;Mancik & Parker, 2019;Ousey & Lee, 2010;Roberts, 2007;Roberts & Lyons, 2011;Roycroft, 2009). Similarly, mixed findings are reported in terms of homicides committed together with other felonies, with some studies finding a positive (Adcock, 2001;Litwin & Xu, 2007;Mancik & Parker, 2019;Ousey & Lee, 2010;Puckett & Lundman, 2003;Roberts, 2007Roberts, , 2015Roberts & Lyons, 2011;Roycroft, 2009) and others a negative relationship (Litwin, 2002(Litwin, , 2004Petersen, 2017b;Regoeczi et al, 2000Regoeczi et al, , 2008Schroeder, 2007;Xu, 2008) with clearance. Two studies reported on a positive relationship between rape-related homicides and clearance (Balemba et al, 2014;Beauregard & Martineau, 2016), while one study found the contrary (Alderde...…”