Clearing homicides

Abstract

Research Summary Since the RAND Corporation studies on investigations were published, there has been a widely held belief among scholars that police agencies and investigative effort matter little to solving crimes. A few researchers have recently challenged this belief, however, producing results that show that investigative effort does play a role in clearing crimes. In this study, we replicate the methodological approach of the RAND studies and use multiagency, multimethod, detailed case files, as well as organizational analysis, to examine the association among investigative effort, case features, organizational factors, and the clearance of homicide cases. The results show that variation between the homicide clearances in agencies can be explained by case attributes, investigative practices, and organizational differences. Future research should be aimed at building on these results using a similar design with a larger number of agencies. Policy Implications An agency's ability to clear homicides is a function of the resources it applies to conduct investigations and how it organizes its effort. Agencies seeking to increase their ability to clear homicides should focus on increasing investigative efforts for cases (i.e., thoroughness of the initial investigative response) and prioritize oversight, management, and evaluation of investigation work. The results of our study show that providing justice to the family, friends, and communities of homicide victims is an achievable goal for law enforcement agencies when they attend to investigative efforts.

Explainable machine learning for predicting homicide clearance in the United States

“…Finally, according to Wolfgang (1958), area population is also a significant predictor, as homicides occurring in highly populated areas may offer perpetrators the possibility to escape or hide in anonymity, compared to communities with fewer people (and fewer suspects) with higher informal social control. More recently, a line of empirical research further enriched the non-discretionary perspective by recommending to also consider law enforcement resources, training and organizational practices as potential correlates for clearing homicides (McEwen and Regoeczi, 2015;Carter and Carter, 2016;Wellford et al, 2019;Pizarro et al, 2020). A study by Braga and Dusseault (2018), for instance, indicates that clearance rates can be improved through corresponding increases of resources dedicated to homicide detectives.…”

Registration and the Closure of Stranger-Perpetrated Sex Crimes Reported to Police

“…Some of the most important include the capacity of police to respond to the specific crime (e.g., are police trained and resourced to respond), the level of effort dedicated to the investigation (e.g., judgments about the level and type of resources the case should receive), and the difficulty of the case itself to be solved (e.g., presence of crime scene evidence, witnesses, or cooperative victim). Consistent with these themes, the literature has shown cases close more quickly when there are more witnesses available, more evidence left at the scene (Regoeczi et al, 2008;Wellford et al, 2019), when the offender and victim are known to each other (Roberts, 2007;Wellford et al, 2019), when there is a greater amount of injury to victims, when the victims are younger (Roberts, 2008), and as a function of other aspects of victims such as the "quality" of their sexual assault (Spohn & Tellis, 2010). 7 With these general themes in mind, several covariates were extracted from NIBRS to control for differences in cases, which may have occurred from pre-to post-implementation.…”

The role of detective experience on homicide clearances

“…Case characteristics consist of incident elements often outside of the investigators control, such as motive or weapon. Investigative quality has been a more recent focus (see Wellford et al, 2019) and often taps into the resources made available to a case, such as training opportunities, technological tools and case file organization.…”

“…Pizarro et al (2018) looked at changes made within the Rochester (NY) Police Department's homicide unit, also finding that improvements to investigative practice led to higher probabilities of clearance while controlling for other factors. Wellford et al (2019) provide a detailed examination of the literature on investigative importance to clearance and followed up with eight agencies to holistically assess factors influencing homicide closure. They found significant results for investigative and organizational factors.…”