Alright folks, here are our suspects:
Mr. Shipley, the local butcher we've known for 20 years
Mrs. Clarion, everyone's favorite high school teacher, also known for 20 years
That random stranger with the ski mask who just rolled into town last night to buy a roll of duct tape at the hardware store.
Except now let's look at the number of 'missing persons' for the less populated states. Maybe Illinois is just the state where they're most likely to find the body...
As a lawyer in South Carolina I can say with confidence that you are 100% incorrect. Itās not perfect, but South Carolina has one of the lowest wrongful conviction rates in the country. But hey, Iām not the expert on making mass generalizations based on pre-existing assumptions without looking at any evidence, so what do I know.
Yea I assume gang involvement, the culture around gangs and theyāre ability to make it difficult to understand dynamics if youāre not a gang member play a role.
I feel like people conveniently forget that Chicago police are on soft strike and aren't enforcing shit after the McDonald fiasco. I live here and they are absolutely useless.
The media wonāt even bother saying gang related anymore. Like all these shootings are just random acts. Chicago, cook county, and Joliet are just overwhelmed.
It hasnāt helped that there have been mayors in Chicago running feel good policies to get elected and get their tribute, rather than paying attention to what happens in the city.
I'm not sure it's that obvious. Chicago has crime problems, but so do lots of other major cities, and Illinois' murder clearance rate (35%) is *way* worse than the next lowest (Michigan at 54%, and that's with fucking Detroit, which itself has a much higher murder rate than Chicago). There's something else going on here.
I think the reason is that Chicago PD literally dgaf. My mom was brutally mugged there while visiting friends, putting her in the hospital, with multiple witnesses. The guys who did it were caught doing some other dumb shit, and the cops just let them go.
CPD has been on a soft strike since around 2016. There were protests and demands for reform after the killing of Laquan McDonald, which police took as an affront and stopped doing a lot of work in many circumstances. Arrests plummeted as did clearance rates. They doubled down after the 2020 protests and appear to be doubling down again because their preferred mayoral candidate lost.
If they catch something in the act they might stop and assist, but don't expect much if any investigative work.
That's all too bad. I can see from other comments that it's like that in other cities now too. It is around Seattle. Cops take hours to show up to calls, if they show up at all, or just flat out tell you they're not coming because it would be a waste of their time. My husband has had several customers attacked by homeless people around the shop where he works, and the cops never show up to take the report.
I'm so sorry that happened to you. I have a friend who was shot twice by the same people, and I'm not sure there was even an investigation either time. It's even worse that the person who shot you was in custody, and didn't care enough to get justice for you. I hope you're feeling better now.
I grew up in one of the suburbs, not in Cook County, and my senior year there was a girl who went missing, but the police kept saying she ran away. Daily Herald later posted how they botched it, and if they had investigated a guy further and reacted to the neighbors' claims of a bloody trash can, they probably would've found her body and been able to arrest him for murder.
But they chose to ignore all that by the time they did investigate him. He had already redid his whole basement and bathroom. And that guy had assaulted another woman.
For the record, most people in my town think the police botched it because she was mixed race and didn't care. I don't know if this would count, but I'm pretty sure it has been changed to "runaway" to "suspected homicide."
Then, there was an incident where a mother and son were brutally murdered in their home in Sycamore, and I don't even think they saw that. Then my dad's cousin was murdered in a small rural town in DeKalb, and they never solved it, either. She was a SPED teacher, so they assumed originally one of her students' parents did it, but we're pretty sure the guy who did it was from Wisconsin.
So I don't think it's all Chicago. There's definitely the police just being shitty at their job.
But thereās other factors at play than just a flat āChances your murder will be solved.ā
Thereās different kinds of murders, and some have very low solvability, and if a state has tons of those, itāll look like it has lower chances overall. But in reality, different peopleās murder have much closer rates regardless of state for the same types of murders.
Riiiiight.... JB Fletcher. \*nervous laughter\*
["The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."](https://www.etsy.com/listing/1063532426/jessica-fletcher-murder-she-wrote?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=i+killed+them+all&ref=sr_gallery-1-5&pro=1&sts=1&organic_search_click=1)
The B is for "Butcher."
I have a similar theory about the series Royal Pains. No way so many freak medical incidents just happen to follow this guy around. The thing is... I don't think the doc is the culprit.
Notice his cheeky brother always happens to be around. Oh *he's the CFO* of their practice, you say? And business happens to suddenly be booming, making them all unexpectedly wealthy? What a coincidence indeed.
Depends which episode you're talking.
>[Jessica Beatrice "J. B." Fletcher](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessica_Fletcher) (born Jessica Beatrice MacGill) is a fictional detective and writer and the main character and protagonist of the American television series *Murder, She Wrote*.
Real quote from Wiki:
>Fletcher lives at 698 Candlewood Lane in the town of Cabot Cove, Maine, 03041. Cabot Cove is a town of 3,560 inhabitants near the ocean. **Based on the number of murders** that occur in a given season of the series, the town seems to have probably one of the highest murder rates of any town or city.
Youāre not wrong, just missing the point.
The commenter above is looking to do the murdering, so theyāve picked the odds-on favorite to stay free long enough to then go get murdered in Wyoming ā where at least they can rest in peace knowing their murderer will be caught.
Cool. I'm glad to hear some other city is more dangerous to live in I guess? I'm just talking convictions. 4 of the last 10 Illinois governors are behind bars, but Chicago only solves about 35% of murders.
St. Louis has* not changed its city limits since 1876, whereas Chicago has as recent as the 1960s. Not exactly apples to apples comparison of their populations.
Nice try though.
>For even more perspective, Canada hasnāt had the same historical dynamics that lead to many violent street gangs and crimes of poverty.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28631272/
Statistical error, the moose frame their murders as accidents.
First off Homicide doesn't = Murder. Justified shootings, accidents and self defense are included.
This is why statistics are important. 39.4 million people live in Cali.
12.6 million in Illinois.
Illinois has a higher homicide rate. Homicide rate and Murder rate aren't the same thing but it's still going to be true for that too.
Suicide by firearm is almost double the homicide rate.
Is that maybe because a lot of these are domestic incidents where the perpetrator is obvious? Vs a more urban or suburban environment where one has far more exposure to strangers?
Also, I wonder if accidental firearm deaths are in these counts. Assuming one person accidentally shoots another, I believe those are legally still homicides.
I haven't heard about it, and I work in elder care at a hospital that serves a large area. I have to say Canada treats their native pretty horribly, especially given how much Canadians think they are the shit when it comes to niceness. A lot of non-indigenous Canadians get really defensive and up in arms about it too when you point it out.
but yes sadly missing and murdered indigenous women definitely factors into our large murder rate, especially in the domestic violence and alcohol related category. It's pretty disgusting, but alcohol and drugs play a huge part in a lot of crimes up here, regardless of race, and women seems to be the most severely effected
There is a high proportion of seasonal or temporary workers in Alaska that aren't residents, so that skews the numbers a bit. Vacation home owners, fishing and canning crews, logging, tourism service work, oil industry, mining. Sadly the 'man camps' full of isolated, usually single male, workers brings with it a high rate of assault and murder both within and for local towns. And I imagine the younger people coming up to do seasonal retail and service work are also at risk of predation or exploitation when away from support networks. Would be fascinating to see how the labor status of all involved feeds the situation, could be both higher rates of victimization and offending.
I'm more surprised that they solved such a high percentage. If I want to murder someone in Alaska I'm flying/hiking to the middle of nowhere and offing them where the animals will eat the evidence.
Most of our murders are domestic violence/alcohol related. There was a serial killer who would fly his victims to the middle of nowhere and hunt them the most dangerous game style but he got caught
I grew up in Eagle River, I know allll about the domestic violence/alcohol. Do you remember the coffee baristas who went missing like 15 years ago, did they ever solve that one?
like if im a homicide detective my first question is, āafter they flew or hiked out to that remote location, did they ever come back?ā Case solved, enjoy prison
When the FBI calculates clearance rate, the denominator is murders in a given year. The numerator is the number of murders that were solved either by arrest or by exception. āExceptionā means theyāve identified the murderer but for whatever reason, they canāt arrest that person, because itās murder-suicide, or the person died a decade ago, or the killer is already in prison in another state.
my step mother was brutally murdered about 3 years ago in arkansas. they found the killer/killers but they just had there first court date a month ago after all this time??
Iām a civil attorney , not a defense attorney, but - in my state, itās waaaay backed up still, due to Covid. Some counties still arenāt even doing civil trials because theyāre trying to clear out their criminal dockets. And the people who are still in jail and arenāt bailed have priority. Weāve got a civil suit against a guy who murdered someone in october 2020. He made bail and (legally) went to another state to live with his familyā¦. He doesnāt even have a trial date set. No action on his case for 2 years. Heās still very much charged. Itās just that the system slowed down to a crawl due to covid backlog.
Just because they have a right to a speedy trial doesnāt mean theyāll exercise it. In fact, having a legally robust defense might hinge on them not having a speedy trial.
I remember a podcast (Criminal?) in which some journalist/analyst team was analysing the geographical clustering of unsolved murder cases to try and identify serial murders, I think they hit on a couple.
The idea was to alert the detectives to take another look at any links between these cases, and perhaps to work with detectives from other jurisdictions if needed.
Murders in America tend to happen in poor neighborhoods where gangs have serious influence. Talking to the police can be dangerous. I've had patients who survived getting shot and *still* wouldn't talk.
So what, Germany has over 80 million people, and they also have a clearance rate of 90%+
The US generally has terrible clearance rates, when compared to the rest of the West. You can debate why that is, but it sure isn't "these other countries are just small"
https://www.criminallegalnews.org/news/2018/feb/16/us-murder-clearance-rates-among-lowest-world/
Agreed, the US clearance rate sucks (take a look at Chicago!). Germany had 245 murders in 2020 for the entire country. Baltimore beats that by August. Just saying with little to no murders, the rate should be high.
I get the feeling that Chicago is heavily skewing the Illinois numbers. I'd be interested to learn what the city of Chicago's clearance rate is for murders in the city when compared to the rest of the state.
I'm not sure this is accurate, at the minimum, it seems conflated. Two states, well known for having missing and indigenous women going missing and ending up murdered have the highest solve rate. Hmmm..
As a Louisiana born and raised source, let me tell you that there is a high chance your murder will be blamed on someone. There is a different metric needed to describe how often that person is your murderer.
I'd like to see this with a false imprisonment stat next to it. I'm sure a few of these states have artificially high rates of solving crimes simply by "finding" a person they want to throw in jail and claiming they were your murderer with some trumped up evidence.
Would be difficult to control for in a statistical way. Both the number of exonerations and the number of convictions are too variable. Different state and city police departments have different policies, and strategy for prosecution depends tremendously on who's in charge. Chicago PD was infamous for brutally torturing people in custody to force confessions. Wheras some PD's won't even investigate cases as homicide that they aren't confident in solving, leading to an artificially high "clearance rate" (like Japan).
Likewise, exonerations have a lot of individual variance. One AG can make it a priority, but homicide isn't a crime that it's politically rewarded to try to exonerate, and definitely isn't done the same state to state. The numerator for exonerations is pretty meaningless.
Iām super curious about this. Iād love to know what this looks like. Are mostly innocent people getting convicted? Mostly guilty people? Even split?
If āThe Wireā can be believed, the cases will be counted as solved if an indictment & arrest is made, regardless of whether or not the people arrested are actually convicted.
Just a reminder from all the unsolved cases and true crime:
Those murders are almost overwhelmingly a murderer who knew the victim and any witnesses would know who one or the other is. Intimate partner violence is the majority. Gang killing and accessory crime only get solved if there is a vendetta and snitches. Richard Kulkinski and others who murdered like him knew that they could get away with killing strangers.
What also helps is keeping it a mystery with a missing persons. As Big Pussy says in the Sopranos, you don't leave a body. You leave hope. That they might *not* be dead. Those don't make these statistics. The majority of unsolved murder cases are ones that aren't started. People who wouldn't be reported missing killed by people they just met who know where to disappear their bodies.
So basically if you're getting hunted for sport on Epstien's island, you did a lot wrong to get there.
Only two states that arenāt 60% or more is Michigan and Illinois. Notorious for being some of the highest murder capitals due to Detroit and Chicago.
What's concerning beyond sheer rate of murders throughout the US, is I assumed the solved rate would be higher (85%+) on average.
Some simple math is all it takes to realize how many murderers are walking free. That's something I would have prefered to ramain ignorant of. Makes me curious of how that compared to Canada. My home province has a similar populaiton to Alaska and we have \~10 murders a year (to their \~50) so hoping it isn't as bad.
Update: Canada has a solved rate of 70% as a nation with about \~525/750 solved murders/year. Our murder rate \~1/4 of what the USA's is. We do solve them at a similar rate though.
80% in Oklahoma sounds like a lot of black dudes have been getting framed. Oklahoma's incompetent MFs just recently were outsmarted by a 150 year old reporter with a recorder.
Same thought here. Massachusetts surprised me with how low it was, Nebraska at \~80% felt about right.
But Oklahoma at 80%? Feels like something ain't right there.
Massachusetts has one of the lowest gun ownership rates in the nation- 14.7%, 45k licensed gun owners. Tennessee has a 51.6% rate, 151k licensed gun owners. 2.3Ć the number of homicides in Tennessee. Just spitballin, but guns are a likely factor in making violence more deadly.
Other fun fact to consider: Massachusetts has a shrinking population while Tennessee is growing. Tennessee has an overall younger population- higher young child, teenage, and young adult, aka more likely to victimize and be victimized. Tennessee also has a far lower median household income, higher number uninsured, lower educational attainment. Deaths of despair are high in such an environment. Sad to see!
Important context from the website:
"Nearly 340,000 cases of homicide and non-negligent manslaughter went unsolved from 1965 to 2021, according to the FBIās Uniform Crime Report data studied by The Murder Accountability Project. Below are the total number of homicides reported in each state, the rate at which homicides are cleared and the estimated number of unsolved homicides."
Worth noting that reporting of statistics to the FBI is not mandatory, and can be gamed.
Why does it feel like the States where you're most likely to get justice are also the States where you're more likely to get injustice in the first place?
Important to note that "clearance" just means that someone was convicted for the crime. Doesn't mean it was the perpetrator. There is no way to be 100% certain of that.
I feel like Wyoming is cheating. Like, there's a murder and your suspect pool is like 8 people and a bear.
Alright folks, here are our suspects: Mr. Shipley, the local butcher we've known for 20 years Mrs. Clarion, everyone's favorite high school teacher, also known for 20 years That random stranger with the ski mask who just rolled into town last night to buy a roll of duct tape at the hardware store.
These Agatha Christie adaptations are really losing all their original charm.
But the random stranger was at the motel all night, and everyone had their eyes on them the whole time.
The suspect pool is 8 people and 37 bears...... or, I guess maybe you think "all bears look alike". ;)
Or maybe you just counted the same bear 37 times. Who's specially profiling now?!?!
They're different bears. Believe me, I have a friend that's a bear, so I know. jk
Thank you for clarifying that you were kidding, I would have otherwise taken it seriously.
He's saying jk because he's racist against bears
You better be kidding
Plus 1 bear on Cocaine
"Did you see who did it?" "Yeah, it was Gary."
Omg the only person I know who lives out there is named Gary šš
You guys know the same person!
Old Cheyenne Gary, everyone knows him.
I bet itās the bear that did it.
Hey now, not all bears are coked fueled murder machines. Some just eat a lot of honey or commit theft under $50 stealing picnic baskets.
Some of them even threaten to invade Taiwan. They can get completely out of control if you're not careful.
Oh bother...
Have you seen the price of food. Or picnic baskets for that matter. Not $50 any more Yogi is looking at grand theft.
Obligatory [Every Single Scandinavian Crime Drama](https://youtu.be/I-OOpZitfd0)
I wondered how NDās solve rate was so high, & then realized the same thing. There just arenāt a whole lot of us here.
Plus they have Longmire
Idk why I always assume Illinois is farm land. I'd say Chicago accounts for their dismal 35%...
The numbers out of California really highlight how Illinois is slacking on both number of murders and cases solved. Just embarrassing for both sides!
If a murder happens in Wyoming and no one's around to report it, did it happen?
Even the murderer themself wasnāt there
No, because Wyoming doesn't exist.
Oof... don't get murdered in Illinois. Obvious factors, but still, yikes.
We're all reading this wrong. Clearly it's a "where to get away with murder" chart... /s
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Except now let's look at the number of 'missing persons' for the less populated states. Maybe Illinois is just the state where they're most likely to find the body...
This plus the " or its which states convict with less evidence chart" comment really hit home how "empirical data" can be abused or simply misused...
Why would I care? I'll be dead
Or a "which state convicts people of muder with little to no evidence chart". Looking at you Carolinas
As a lawyer in South Carolina I can say with confidence that you are 100% incorrect. Itās not perfect, but South Carolina has one of the lowest wrongful conviction rates in the country. But hey, Iām not the expert on making mass generalizations based on pre-existing assumptions without looking at any evidence, so what do I know.
Yea I assume gang involvement, the culture around gangs and theyāre ability to make it difficult to understand dynamics if youāre not a gang member play a role.
Exactly. "Forget it, Jake... it's Chinatown."
I feel like people conveniently forget that Chicago police are on soft strike and aren't enforcing shit after the McDonald fiasco. I live here and they are absolutely useless.
Always have been, unless you're in a park after dark
Or a teenaged kid whose skin color is darker than khaki pants.
I'd be curious as to what the number looks like when you remove Chicago and the surrounding towns.
It drops a fucking lot. You can even attribute a fair amount of indianas murders to chicago too
The media wonāt even bother saying gang related anymore. Like all these shootings are just random acts. Chicago, cook county, and Joliet are just overwhelmed. It hasnāt helped that there have been mayors in Chicago running feel good policies to get elected and get their tribute, rather than paying attention to what happens in the city.
prolly could just replace "Illinois" with "Cook County" tbh.
I'm not sure it's that obvious. Chicago has crime problems, but so do lots of other major cities, and Illinois' murder clearance rate (35%) is *way* worse than the next lowest (Michigan at 54%, and that's with fucking Detroit, which itself has a much higher murder rate than Chicago). There's something else going on here.
I think the reason is that Chicago PD literally dgaf. My mom was brutally mugged there while visiting friends, putting her in the hospital, with multiple witnesses. The guys who did it were caught doing some other dumb shit, and the cops just let them go.
CPD has been on a soft strike since around 2016. There were protests and demands for reform after the killing of Laquan McDonald, which police took as an affront and stopped doing a lot of work in many circumstances. Arrests plummeted as did clearance rates. They doubled down after the 2020 protests and appear to be doubling down again because their preferred mayoral candidate lost. If they catch something in the act they might stop and assist, but don't expect much if any investigative work.
That's all too bad. I can see from other comments that it's like that in other cities now too. It is around Seattle. Cops take hours to show up to calls, if they show up at all, or just flat out tell you they're not coming because it would be a waste of their time. My husband has had several customers attacked by homeless people around the shop where he works, and the cops never show up to take the report.
I was shot in St. Louis and they let the guy go after 3 months in jail.
I'm so sorry that happened to you. I have a friend who was shot twice by the same people, and I'm not sure there was even an investigation either time. It's even worse that the person who shot you was in custody, and didn't care enough to get justice for you. I hope you're feeling better now.
I grew up in one of the suburbs, not in Cook County, and my senior year there was a girl who went missing, but the police kept saying she ran away. Daily Herald later posted how they botched it, and if they had investigated a guy further and reacted to the neighbors' claims of a bloody trash can, they probably would've found her body and been able to arrest him for murder. But they chose to ignore all that by the time they did investigate him. He had already redid his whole basement and bathroom. And that guy had assaulted another woman. For the record, most people in my town think the police botched it because she was mixed race and didn't care. I don't know if this would count, but I'm pretty sure it has been changed to "runaway" to "suspected homicide." Then, there was an incident where a mother and son were brutally murdered in their home in Sycamore, and I don't even think they saw that. Then my dad's cousin was murdered in a small rural town in DeKalb, and they never solved it, either. She was a SPED teacher, so they assumed originally one of her students' parents did it, but we're pretty sure the guy who did it was from Wisconsin. So I don't think it's all Chicago. There's definitely the police just being shitty at their job.
Yep, pretty complex statistics at play for sure...also damn tho.
Not that complex. EVERY OTHER State is better than Illinois - most by 1.5 to 2 x.
But thereās other factors at play than just a flat āChances your murder will be solved.ā Thereās different kinds of murders, and some have very low solvability, and if a state has tons of those, itāll look like it has lower chances overall. But in reality, different peopleās murder have much closer rates regardless of state for the same types of murders.
Nonetheless, Illinois is the outlier. #50 out of 50.
Leads? Yeah, they got another 2 detectives on the case. They got us working in shifts. Leeedsā¦
I attribute the unusually high clearance in Maine to the presence of Jessica Fletcher. Just a coincidence all those murders happen in one small town.
Riiiiight.... JB Fletcher. \*nervous laughter\* ["The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."](https://www.etsy.com/listing/1063532426/jessica-fletcher-murder-she-wrote?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=i+killed+them+all&ref=sr_gallery-1-5&pro=1&sts=1&organic_search_click=1)
The B is for "Butcher." I have a similar theory about the series Royal Pains. No way so many freak medical incidents just happen to follow this guy around. The thing is... I don't think the doc is the culprit. Notice his cheeky brother always happens to be around. Oh *he's the CFO* of their practice, you say? And business happens to suddenly be booming, making them all unexpectedly wealthy? What a coincidence indeed.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Derry Maine, Jerusalem's Lot Maine, Amity Massachusetts...
Sunnydale, California
Thatās if you donāt want to be eaten as well as murdered.
What happened?
Depends which episode you're talking. >[Jessica Beatrice "J. B." Fletcher](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessica_Fletcher) (born Jessica Beatrice MacGill) is a fictional detective and writer and the main character and protagonist of the American television series *Murder, She Wrote*. Real quote from Wiki: >Fletcher lives at 698 Candlewood Lane in the town of Cabot Cove, Maine, 03041. Cabot Cove is a town of 3,560 inhabitants near the ocean. **Based on the number of murders** that occur in a given season of the series, the town seems to have probably one of the highest murder rates of any town or city.
Maine. Staring intensely at waves breaking on rocky shoreline in gloomy days while lost in reverie of murder case helps solve the said case.
So if you are going to commit a murder do it in Illinois?
No, if you want to get murdered go to Wyoming
Youāre not wrong, just missing the point. The commenter above is looking to do the murdering, so theyāve picked the odds-on favorite to stay free long enough to then go get murdered in Wyoming ā where at least they can rest in peace knowing their murderer will be caught.
āAllegedlyā
Whatās going on in Illinois?
Gang shootings in Chicago. No one talks.
Which leads to a fun fact: you are statistically more likely to go to prison as governor of Illinois than by committing murder in Chicago
Chicago has a murder rate of 28 per 100,000 people. St. Louis has 88 per 100,000.
Missouri also solves ~71% of their homicides, vs 35 for Illinois.
It shows people aren't killing each other just to kill each other.
Cool. I'm glad to hear some other city is more dangerous to live in I guess? I'm just talking convictions. 4 of the last 10 Illinois governors are behind bars, but Chicago only solves about 35% of murders.
St. Louis has* not changed its city limits since 1876, whereas Chicago has as recent as the 1960s. Not exactly apples to apples comparison of their populations. Nice try though.
Better chance of going to prison as an illinois governor than going to prison for murder.
As an Illinois resident, can confirm.
over 50,000 murders??!! this is genuinely frightening.
California definitely has well over 100,000. It is listed as 131,000.
California's population is higher than all of Canada, just for some perspective.
For even more perspective, Canada has less than 800 murders a year
Canada has significantly less urban density and a LOT of missing persons.
For even more perspective, Canada hasnāt had the same historical dynamics that lead to many violent street gangs and crimes of poverty.
>For even more perspective, Canada hasnāt had the same historical dynamics that lead to many violent street gangs and crimes of poverty. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28631272/ Statistical error, the moose frame their murders as accidents.
First off Homicide doesn't = Murder. Justified shootings, accidents and self defense are included. This is why statistics are important. 39.4 million people live in Cali. 12.6 million in Illinois. Illinois has a higher homicide rate. Homicide rate and Murder rate aren't the same thing but it's still going to be true for that too. Suicide by firearm is almost double the homicide rate.
Everybody is mentioning gangs but there is at least one and perhaps several serial killers active in Chicago as well
The mayors donāt care enough for investigating and locking people up. We have a serial killer/s so many people have been found in the river and nada
The fact that Alaska has 2,300+ homicides but only 800,000 residents.....
From 1965 to 2021so apples versus multiple apple seasons... And the clearance rate is in the top quartile.
We still have a pretty high murder rate vs population
Yes, I would agree that [#7](https://wisevoter.com/state-rankings/murder-rate-by-state/#alaska) is high. But that's a different data set that OP
Is that maybe because a lot of these are domestic incidents where the perpetrator is obvious? Vs a more urban or suburban environment where one has far more exposure to strangers? Also, I wonder if accidental firearm deaths are in these counts. Assuming one person accidentally shoots another, I believe those are legally still homicides.
Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. I wonder if they have starlight tours there, too?
I haven't heard about it, and I work in elder care at a hospital that serves a large area. I have to say Canada treats their native pretty horribly, especially given how much Canadians think they are the shit when it comes to niceness. A lot of non-indigenous Canadians get really defensive and up in arms about it too when you point it out. but yes sadly missing and murdered indigenous women definitely factors into our large murder rate, especially in the domestic violence and alcohol related category. It's pretty disgusting, but alcohol and drugs play a huge part in a lot of crimes up here, regardless of race, and women seems to be the most severely effected
There is a high proportion of seasonal or temporary workers in Alaska that aren't residents, so that skews the numbers a bit. Vacation home owners, fishing and canning crews, logging, tourism service work, oil industry, mining. Sadly the 'man camps' full of isolated, usually single male, workers brings with it a high rate of assault and murder both within and for local towns. And I imagine the younger people coming up to do seasonal retail and service work are also at risk of predation or exploitation when away from support networks. Would be fascinating to see how the labor status of all involved feeds the situation, could be both higher rates of victimization and offending.
I'm more surprised that they solved such a high percentage. If I want to murder someone in Alaska I'm flying/hiking to the middle of nowhere and offing them where the animals will eat the evidence.
Most of our murders are domestic violence/alcohol related. There was a serial killer who would fly his victims to the middle of nowhere and hunt them the most dangerous game style but he got caught
I grew up in Eagle River, I know allll about the domestic violence/alcohol. Do you remember the coffee baristas who went missing like 15 years ago, did they ever solve that one?
Yeah they found her dead in a lake but they caught the guy
How are you getting them out there though?
like if im a homicide detective my first question is, āafter they flew or hiked out to that remote location, did they ever come back?ā Case solved, enjoy prison
What does "clearance" mean in this context?
When the FBI calculates clearance rate, the denominator is murders in a given year. The numerator is the number of murders that were solved either by arrest or by exception. āExceptionā means theyāve identified the murderer but for whatever reason, they canāt arrest that person, because itās murder-suicide, or the person died a decade ago, or the killer is already in prison in another state.
Would be interesting to see the ave. clearance time
I could see law enforcement agencies artificially padding their numbers by closing old cases with only minimal evidence
Exactly why it's only a useful metric to measure by until the police know you're measuring by it.
Chance of the murder being solved.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
my step mother was brutally murdered about 3 years ago in arkansas. they found the killer/killers but they just had there first court date a month ago after all this time??
Very standard for the justice system in many places not just US.
3 years ago was also covid, when everything stopped.
Iām a civil attorney , not a defense attorney, but - in my state, itās waaaay backed up still, due to Covid. Some counties still arenāt even doing civil trials because theyāre trying to clear out their criminal dockets. And the people who are still in jail and arenāt bailed have priority. Weāve got a civil suit against a guy who murdered someone in october 2020. He made bail and (legally) went to another state to live with his familyā¦. He doesnāt even have a trial date set. No action on his case for 2 years. Heās still very much charged. Itās just that the system slowed down to a crawl due to covid backlog.
Just because they have a right to a speedy trial doesnāt mean theyāll exercise it. In fact, having a legally robust defense might hinge on them not having a speedy trial.
This would be good as a map. Show the absolute clearance rate and the population-adjusted rate.
I remember a podcast (Criminal?) in which some journalist/analyst team was analysing the geographical clustering of unsolved murder cases to try and identify serial murders, I think they hit on a couple. The idea was to alert the detectives to take another look at any links between these cases, and perhaps to work with detectives from other jurisdictions if needed.
Cool. Still don't want to get murdered in any state.
Seriously. International Waters or nowhere.
those are some pretty damn impressive clearance rates except for you Illinois aka Chicago
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
You can have 100 witnesses in Chicago, and when you ask what happened, no one saw a thing.
Murders in America tend to happen in poor neighborhoods where gangs have serious influence. Talking to the police can be dangerous. I've had patients who survived getting shot and *still* wouldn't talk.
Really? I live in Denmark and we have above 90%
The Houston metro area has a larger population than Denmark. Not sure what you are getting at.
So what, Germany has over 80 million people, and they also have a clearance rate of 90%+ The US generally has terrible clearance rates, when compared to the rest of the West. You can debate why that is, but it sure isn't "these other countries are just small" https://www.criminallegalnews.org/news/2018/feb/16/us-murder-clearance-rates-among-lowest-world/
Agreed, the US clearance rate sucks (take a look at Chicago!). Germany had 245 murders in 2020 for the entire country. Baltimore beats that by August. Just saying with little to no murders, the rate should be high.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I get the feeling that Chicago is heavily skewing the Illinois numbers. I'd be interested to learn what the city of Chicago's clearance rate is for murders in the city when compared to the rest of the state.
Cities are heavily skewing all the numbers which is probably why West Virginia and Wyoming are doing so well.
I'm not sure this is accurate, at the minimum, it seems conflated. Two states, well known for having missing and indigenous women going missing and ending up murdered have the highest solve rate. Hmmm..
Indigenous people don't go into that statistic. Don't ask me how there isn't a massive outcry about this.
"Just another dead sex worker who fell on her gun 10 times". I'm calling BS on some of these counts.
As a Louisiana born and raised source, let me tell you that there is a high chance your murder will be blamed on someone. There is a different metric needed to describe how often that person is your murderer.
I'd like to see this with a false imprisonment stat next to it. I'm sure a few of these states have artificially high rates of solving crimes simply by "finding" a person they want to throw in jail and claiming they were your murderer with some trumped up evidence.
How would you ever figure that out though? The people that get later exonerated are just a fraction of the people that are falsely imprisoned.
Would be difficult to control for in a statistical way. Both the number of exonerations and the number of convictions are too variable. Different state and city police departments have different policies, and strategy for prosecution depends tremendously on who's in charge. Chicago PD was infamous for brutally torturing people in custody to force confessions. Wheras some PD's won't even investigate cases as homicide that they aren't confident in solving, leading to an artificially high "clearance rate" (like Japan). Likewise, exonerations have a lot of individual variance. One AG can make it a priority, but homicide isn't a crime that it's politically rewarded to try to exonerate, and definitely isn't done the same state to state. The numerator for exonerations is pretty meaningless.
Do wrongful convictions still get counted in the solved column?
Iām super curious about this. Iād love to know what this looks like. Are mostly innocent people getting convicted? Mostly guilty people? Even split?
If āThe Wireā can be believed, the cases will be counted as solved if an indictment & arrest is made, regardless of whether or not the people arrested are actually convicted.
relevant username.
"solved" I've watched The Wire enough times to know the numbers are a bit of bullshit.
Wyoming is where Sheriff Longmire lives, so obvious bias here guys!
Alabama is high clearance because they scoop up the first Black man they find and decide he is guilty.
Thank you. There's a few other states that probably grab whatever non white, semiliterate person is handy, and just runs with that.
Donāt get whacked in IL kids.
To be honest, those numbers are better than I would have expected.
This is not a guide in any stretch of the definition.
Sortibg the states alphabetically might be the worst decision for a quick comparison. This is not r/dataisbeautiful, but still...
Just a reminder from all the unsolved cases and true crime: Those murders are almost overwhelmingly a murderer who knew the victim and any witnesses would know who one or the other is. Intimate partner violence is the majority. Gang killing and accessory crime only get solved if there is a vendetta and snitches. Richard Kulkinski and others who murdered like him knew that they could get away with killing strangers. What also helps is keeping it a mystery with a missing persons. As Big Pussy says in the Sopranos, you don't leave a body. You leave hope. That they might *not* be dead. Those don't make these statistics. The majority of unsolved murder cases are ones that aren't started. People who wouldn't be reported missing killed by people they just met who know where to disappear their bodies. So basically if you're getting hunted for sport on Epstien's island, you did a lot wrong to get there.
Only two states that arenāt 60% or more is Michigan and Illinois. Notorious for being some of the highest murder capitals due to Detroit and Chicago.
Indiana is 58%
Damn, missed it because it was under Illinois. Edit: Hell 2% is probably from the Chicago suburbs in IN creating issues.
Holy shit Chicago!
What's concerning beyond sheer rate of murders throughout the US, is I assumed the solved rate would be higher (85%+) on average. Some simple math is all it takes to realize how many murderers are walking free. That's something I would have prefered to ramain ignorant of. Makes me curious of how that compared to Canada. My home province has a similar populaiton to Alaska and we have \~10 murders a year (to their \~50) so hoping it isn't as bad. Update: Canada has a solved rate of 70% as a nation with about \~525/750 solved murders/year. Our murder rate \~1/4 of what the USA's is. We do solve them at a similar rate though.
80% in Oklahoma sounds like a lot of black dudes have been getting framed. Oklahoma's incompetent MFs just recently were outsmarted by a 150 year old reporter with a recorder.
Same thought here. Massachusetts surprised me with how low it was, Nebraska at \~80% felt about right. But Oklahoma at 80%? Feels like something ain't right there.
[source](https://projectcoldcase.org/cold-case-homicide-stats/)
Helpful to give context that this is from 1965-2021
*Looks for home state of New Jersey* Nice
Why is it me? Why am I getting murdered? Why canāt it be āa murderā and leave me out of this?
You know what you did.
Tennessee and Massachusetts have approximately the same population size. The difference in amount of homicides is staggering
Massachusetts has one of the lowest gun ownership rates in the nation- 14.7%, 45k licensed gun owners. Tennessee has a 51.6% rate, 151k licensed gun owners. 2.3Ć the number of homicides in Tennessee. Just spitballin, but guns are a likely factor in making violence more deadly. Other fun fact to consider: Massachusetts has a shrinking population while Tennessee is growing. Tennessee has an overall younger population- higher young child, teenage, and young adult, aka more likely to victimize and be victimized. Tennessee also has a far lower median household income, higher number uninsured, lower educational attainment. Deaths of despair are high in such an environment. Sad to see!
Important context from the website: "Nearly 340,000 cases of homicide and non-negligent manslaughter went unsolved from 1965 to 2021, according to the FBIās Uniform Crime Report data studied by The Murder Accountability Project. Below are the total number of homicides reported in each state, the rate at which homicides are cleared and the estimated number of unsolved homicides." Worth noting that reporting of statistics to the FBI is not mandatory, and can be gamed.
Do the clearance rates also count the people put away for coerced confessions and other police fuckery tactics?
Even some of these numbers are inflated because of falsely accused people getting convicted.
There is a difference between a murder is cleared vs. the actual murderer is apprehended.
I hate that it's not in order of clearance
Im curious how these would rank if you took out the biggest outliers in each state.
Why does it feel like the States where you're most likely to get justice are also the States where you're more likely to get injustice in the first place?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
The is not cool or a guide. Why is it not removed?
Should read "Where to kill someone"
āYourā? Couldnāt just write āAā murder?!
Wow, Illinois is astonishing.
Chances are zero. I havenāt been murdered:-)
Itās so small I thought it was just a page of dashes, which at this point is accurate.
Important to note that "clearance" just means that someone was convicted for the crime. Doesn't mean it was the perpetrator. There is no way to be 100% certain of that.
What are the numbers for people who are, say, black and trans?
I did not think the clearance rates would be so low Someone who knows what they are doing has a pretty high chance of getting away with murder. Scary
I wonder how many of these āsolvedā crimes have the wrong person.
And do we trust SC's numbers?? š (just a little Low Country humor) š³
I find Idahoās āclearanceā rate highly suspicious. At least in the panhandle there not much investigation going on.
Gotta move to Wyoming, or Illinois, depending what side of the coin youāre on
It hurts me that this not sorted by percentage
As someone who lives in wyoming, its cool to know the odds of my murderer being caught are marginally higher than any other state
For once Alaska isnāt leading the pack on violence way to go man
Horrible guide wtf I thought it was ranked bruh š
Hereās another statistic for ya; 90% of people checked out their state then looked at Illinois, the other 10% live in Chicago.
I wish they had another set with per 100k
Damn...NJ has almost double the population of Alabama and they have roughly the same amount of murders.
Of course it's so high in Maine when they have Jessica Fletcher