Examining the Clearance Rates of Violent and Non-Violent Offences in the United States: A Trend Analysis, 2011–2018

• Date: 01 August 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/0306624X20944688
• Published date: 01 August 2021
• Author: Avdi S. Avdija,Arif Akgul
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0306624X20944688

International Journal of

Offender Therapy and

Comparative Criminology

2021, Vol. 65(10-11) 1224 –1241

© The Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/0306624X20944688

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Article

Examining the Clearance

Rates of Violent and

Non-Violent Offences in

the United States: A Trend

Analysis, 2011–2018

Avdi S. Avdija1 and Arif Akgul1

Abstract

The main objective of this study was to examine the clearance rates of violent and

non-violent offenses in the United States for the years 2011 to 2018. This study

focused specifically on the differences in clearance rates of incidents involving crimes

against persons, crimes against property, and crimes against society. The analyses

are based on the FBI’s NIBRS data that have been reported by local, state, and

federal law enforcement agencies for 8 years combined. The analyses focused on the

characteristics of the distribution of clearance rates by the types of incidents. The

clearance rates were calculated based on the number of incidents that were cleared

by arrest or exceptional means. The results show that the average clearance rate for

incidents involving crimes against persons is 48.6%, for incidents involving property

crimes is 18%, and for incidents involving crimes against society is 78%. The trend

analyses show that the clearance rates are gradually decreasing for all three types of

offense categories.

Keywords

clearance rates, trend analysis, crimes against persons, crimes against property, and

crimes against society

Introduction

Incident clearance rates are affected by a variety of factors. Some of them have a nega-

tive impact and some factors positively affect clearance rates. The most obvious fac-

tors that affect the clearance rates include lack of solvability factors in more serious

1Indiana State University, Terre Haute, IN, USA

Corresponding Author:

Avdi S. Avdija, School of Criminology & Security studies, Indiana State University, Holmstedt Hall, 242,

620 Chestnut Street, Terre Haute, IN 47809, USA.

Email: avdi.avdija@indstate.edu

944688IJOXXX10.1177/0306624X20944688International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative CriminologyAvdija and Akgul

research-article2020

Avdija and Akgul 1225

crimes, lack of police resources, police response time, the number of offenders and

victims involved, victim-offender relationship, witness-offender relationship, time of

incident, department size, the volume of crimes, etc. (Alderden & Lavery, 2007;

Avdija, 2019a; Blanes i Vidal & Kirchmaier, 2017; Greenwood & Petersilia, 1975;

Jarvis et al., 2017; Mouzos & Muller, 2001; Wellford & Cronin, 2000). Some of these

factors are affected by the nature of the offense itself and by the offender, while other

factors, on the other hand, are within the control of the law enforcement agencies.

Additionally, not all types of offenses are affected equally by the same factors. Some

researchers even argue that clearance rates are affected by selective law enforcement

practices (Alderden & Lavery, 2007; Litwin, 2004; Roberts & Lyons, 2011). Regardless,

there is no one factor that can be judged as the sole cause of a low clearance rate or

high clearance rate. The literature review section in this article focuses on examining

some of the weaknesses of the national datasets that are used to evaluate the clearance

rates and some of the frequently blamed factors responsible for low clearance rates of

crime in the United States.

The Flaws in the Measurements of the Crime Rates

There are many unavoidable issues associated with the existing national database pro-

grams. The crime data that are reported to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, for exam-

ple, are considered flawed and incomplete by many researchers (Blackman & Gardiner,

1984; Targonski, 2011; Uniform Crime Reporting Statistics, 2020). Originally, the

UCR was designed to measure the prevalence and the incidence of crime in the U.S.

One of the major problems with UCR, however, is the lack of uniform definition of

crime across jurisdictions. Even before UCR was developed, there were a few cities

that published crime data at the local level (Barnett-Ryan, 2007; Mosher et al., 2011).

Nonetheless, as is the case with UCR, they did not have a standardized procedure for

recording crimes. This makes us conclude that there are several issues with the UCR

program itself. The name “Uniform Crime Reports” suggests that crimes should be

reported uniformly, but, in reality, this is not the case. Many police departments use

different methods of recording crimes; thus, making the UCR less reliable and less

accurate as a crime database. There are many inconsistencies in crime data reported to

the FBI’s UCR, and for that matter, in other data collection institutions and agencies as

well. The inconsistencies have to do mainly with the way things are measured, defined,

coded and recorded (Barkan & Bryjak, 2011; Maltz, 2006; Walsh & Jorgensen, 2012).

Not all types of crimes or victimizations are classified in the same way when recorded

by law enforcement agencies. For instance, the police respond to a shots-fired call, and

when they arrive at the crime scene, they find out that a person got shot and then he

fell off the balcony. There are two ways to record this death: (a) killed by a firearm, (b)

the person in question is dead because he fell off of the balcony. The question is: which

one is the accurate description of his death? If he did not get shot, he would not have

fallen off the balcony (Mosher et al., 2011). On the other hand, even after he got shot,

he would have survived if he had not fallen off of the building—it is a form of tautol-

ogy and cases like these affect the accuracy of crime data reported to the police.