In 2023, murder and manslaughter charges had the highest crime clearance rate in the United States, with 57.8 percent of all cases being cleared by arrest or so-called exceptional means. Motor vehicle theft cases had the lowest crime clearance rate, at 8.2 percent. What is crime clearance? Within the U.S. criminal justice system, criminal cases can be cleared (or closed) one of two ways. The first is through arrest, which means that at least one person has either been arrested, charged with an offense, or turned over to the court for prosecution. The second way a case can be closed is through what is called exceptional means, where law enforcement must have either identified the offender, gathered enough evidence to arrest, charge, and prosecute someone, identified the offender’s exact location, or come up against a circumstance outside the control of law enforcement that keeps them from arresting and prosecuting the offender. Crime in the United States Despite what many people may believe, crime in the United States has been on the decline. Particularly in regard to violent crime, the violent crime rate has almost halved since 1990, meaning that the U.S. is safer than it was almost 30 years ago. However, due to the FBI's recent transition to a new crime reporting system in which law enforcement agencies voluntarily report crime data, it is possible that figures do not accurately reflect the total amount of crime in the country.

In 2023, the clearance rate for robberies in the South of the United States stood at 24.5 percent. The clearance rate for robberies was highest in the Northeast, at 38.3 percent. Crime clearance is when an arrest is made in a case, or it is cleared by exceptional means.

In 2020, around 28.5 percent of all known rape offenses in cities in the United States were cleared by arrest or by exceptional means. In that same year, 52.3 percent of murder and nonnegligent manslaughter cases in U.S. citites were cleared by arrest or by exceptional means.

The data within only represent 2019 and prior. As of January 2020, Mesa PD transitioned crime reporting to the FBI Unified Crime Reporting (UCR) Program from the Summary Reporting System (SRS) format to the new National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) format. For current clearance rate data based on NIBRS reporting standard please navigate to: https://citydata.mesaaz.gov/Police/Police-Case-Clearance-Rates/wzgc-a7ci

A case is considered “cleared” when it is cleared by arrest or exceptional means. Cases credited as “cleared” in a given month or year may have been opened in a previous month or year. For this reason, the clearance rate for a given period may be above 100%. For information and definitions about calculating clearance rates visit https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-2018/topic-pages/clearances

In 2023, the violent crime rate in the United States was 363.8 cases per 100,000 of the population. Even though the violent crime rate has been decreasing since 1990, the United States tops the ranking of countries with the most prisoners. In addition, due to the FBI's transition to a new crime reporting system in which law enforcement agencies voluntarily submit crime reports, data may not accurately reflect the total number of crimes committed in recent years. Reported violent crime rate in the United States The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation tracks the rate of reported violent crimes per 100,000 U.S. inhabitants. In the timeline above, rates are shown starting in 1990. The rate of reported violent crime has fallen since a high of 758.20 reported crimes in 1991 to a low of 363.6 reported violent crimes in 2014. In 2023, there were around 1.22 million violent crimes reported to the FBI in the United States. This number can be compared to the total number of property crimes, roughly 6.41 million that year. Of violent crimes in 2023, aggravated assaults were the most common offenses in the United States, while homicide offenses were the least common. Law enforcement officers and crime clearance Though the violent crime rate was down in 2013, the number of law enforcement officers also fell. Between 2005 and 2009, the number of law enforcement officers in the United States rose from around 673,100 to 708,800. However, since 2009, the number of officers fell to a low of 626,900 officers in 2013. The number of law enforcement officers has since grown, reaching 720,652 in 2023. In 2023, the crime clearance rate in the U.S. was highest for murder and non-negligent manslaughter charges, with around 57.8 percent of murders being solved by investigators and a suspect being charged with the crime. Additionally, roughly 46.1 percent of aggravated assaults were cleared in that year. A statistics report on violent crime in the U.S. can be found here.

Crime severity index (violent, non-violent, youth) and weighted clearance rates (violent, non-violent), Canada, provinces, territories and Census Metropolitan Areas, 1998 to 2024.

In 2020, around 37.2 percent of all known rape offenses in metropolitan counties in the United States were cleared by arrest or by exceptional means. For murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, 61.8 percent of known cases were cleared by arrest or exceptional means.

Number, rate and percentage changes in rates of homicide victims, Canada, provinces and territories, 1961 to 2024.

This data set is no longer compiled by the Ministry of the Solicitor General. The weighted clearance rate is based on the same principles as the Police Reported Crime Severity Index. In these figures, serious offences are assigned a higher "weight" than less serious offences. For example, solving homicides and robberies has a greater contribution to the overall weighted clearance rate than solving minor theft or mischief cases. The data can be accessed from Statistics Canada.

Investigator(s): Federal Bureau of Investigation Since 1930, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has compiled the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) to serve as periodic nationwide assessments of reported crimes not available elsewhere in the criminal justice system. With the 1977 data, the title was expanded to Uniform Crime Reporting Program Data. Each year, participating law enforcement agencies contribute reports to the FBI either directly or through their state reporting programs. ICPSR archives the UCR data as five separate components: (1) summary data, (2) county-level data, (3) incident-level data (National Incident-Based Reporting System [NIBRS]), (4) hate crime data, and (5) various, mostly nonrecurring, data collections. Summary data are reported in four types of files: (a) Offenses Known and Clearances by Arrest, (b) Property Stolen and Recovered, (c) Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR), and (d) Police Employee (LEOKA) Data (Law Enforcement Officers Killed or Assaulted). The county-level data provide counts of arrests and offenses aggregated to the county level. County populations are also reported. In the late 1970s, new ways to look at crime were studied. The UCR program was subsequently expanded to capture incident-level data with the implementation of the National Incident-Based Reporting System. The NIBRS data focus on various aspects of a crime incident. The gathering of hate crime data by the UCR program was begun in 1990. Hate crimes are defined as crimes that manifest evidence of prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity. In September 1994, disabilities, both physical and mental, were added to the list. The fifth component of ICPSR's UCR holdings is comprised of various collections, many of which are nonrecurring and prepared by individual researchers. These collections go beyond the scope of the standard UCR collections provided by the FBI, either by including data for a range of years or by focusing on other aspects of analysis. NACJD has produced resource guides on UCR and on NIBRS data.

Police Statistics for the City of Franklin compares crime rates (violent and property) and clearance rates (violent and property) vs. national averages.

Provide robbery, snatch, forcible intercourse, car theft, residential theft, drugs, motorcycle theft and 7 other types of cases, weekly statistics on occurrences, clearance, and clearance rate. (This data is a preliminary statistics change file for each week, for reference only, and the correct statistics are still based on the annual criminal statistics of this department.) Case type, number of occurrences, number of clearances, clearance rate

The purpose of the study was to conduct a process and outcome evaluation of the Homicide Clearance Project in the Phoenix, Arizona Police Department. The primary objective of the Homicide Clearance Project was to improve homicide clearance rates by increasing investigative time through the transfer of four crime scene specialists to the homicide unit. In 2004, the Phoenix Police Department received a grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance providing support for the assignment of four crime scene specialists directly to the department's Homicide Unit. Responsibilities of the crime scene specialists were to collect evidence at homicide scenes, prepare scene reports, develop scene diagrams, and other supportive activities. Prior to the project, homicide investigators were responsible for evidence collection, which reduced the time they could devote to investigations. The crime scene specialists were assigned to two of the four investigative squads within the homicide unit. This organizational arrangement provided for a performance evaluation of the squads with crime scene specialists (experimental squads) against the performance of the other squads (comparison squads). During the course of the evaluation, research staff coded information from all homicides that occurred during the 12-month period prior to the transfers (July 1, 2003 - June 30, 2004), referred to as the baseline period, the 2-month training period (July 1, 2004 - August 31, 2004), and a 10-month test period (September 1, 2004 - June 30, 2005). Data were collected on 404 homicide cases (Part 1), 532 homicide victims and survivors (Part 2), and 3,338 records of evidence collected at homicide scenes (Part 3). The two primary sources of information for the evaluation were investigative reports from the department's records management system, called the Police Automated Computer Entry (PACE) system, and crime laboratory reports from the crime laboratory's Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS). Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 each contain variables that measure squad type, time period, and whether six general categories of evidence were collected. Part 1 contains a total of 18 variables including number of investigators, number of patrol officers at the scene, number of witnesses, number of crime scene specialists at the scene, number of investigators collecting evidence at the scene, total number of evidence collectors, whether the case was open or closed, type of arrest, and whether the case was open or closed by arrest. Part 2 contains a total of 37 variables including victim characteristics and motives. Other variables in Part 2 include an instrumental/expressive homicide indicator, whether the case was open or closed, type of arrest, whether the case was open or closed by arrest, number of investigators, number of patrol officers at the scene, number of witnesses, and investigative time to closure. Part 3 contains a total of 46 variables including primary/secondary scene indicator, scene type, number of pieces of evidence, total time at the scene, and number of photos taken. Part 3 also includes variables that measure whether 16 specific types of evidence were found and the number of items of evidence that were collected for 13 specific evidence types.

This statistic shows the crime clearance rate in nonmetropolitan counties in the United States in 2019. In 2019, 36.9 percent of all known rape offenses in nonmetropolitan counties were cleared by arrest or by exceptional means.

Crime severity index (violent, non-violent, youth) and weighted clearance rates (violent, non-violent), police services in British Columbia, 1998 to 2024.

Abstract: Since the 1970s most state restrictions on carrying handguns in public have been eased or eliminated. Several of the early impact evaluations of these changes tended to support the belief that laws that facilitated gun carrying by private citizens deterred violent crime (while possibly increasing property crime). But more recent studies of the impacts of right to carry (RTC) laws conclude that the net effect is to increase state-level violent-crime rates relative to more restrictive regimes. This finding implies that the deterrence mechanism is swamped by other mechanisms, but there has been little evidence on which ones are important in practice. Using a novel data set of 217 large cities over 41 years, we confirm that violent crime increases following RTC adoption. We then document two mechanisms that may account for this result, finding a 50 percent increase in gun theft and a 9-18 percent reduction in violent crime clearance rates. Further analysis of city-level heterogeneity in RTC-induced effects is consistent with the hypothesis that gun theft is a likely cause of the RTC-induced increase in violent crime and more tentative evidence points to clearance as a potential driver.

Crime severity index (violent, non-violent, youth) and weighted clearance rates (violent, non-violent), police services in Saskatchewan, 1998 to 2024.

Provide statistics on the number of drug offenses, robbery, theft, residential burglary, car theft, motorcycle theft, and forced sexual intercourse in the past 10 years, including the annual occurrence, detection, and clearance rates.

India Court Conviction Rate data was reported at 54.200 % in 2022. This records a decrease from the previous number of 57.000 % for 2021. India Court Conviction Rate data is updated yearly, averaging 42.500 % from Dec 2000 (Median) to 2022, with 23 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 59.200 % in 2020 and a record low of 38.500 % in 2012. India Court Conviction Rate data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by National Crime Records Bureau. The data is categorized under India Premium Database’s Crime – Table IN.CRA001: Crime Statistics.