The Problem
Historically, the homicide solve rate in the 1960’s was about 92%. During the following decades this rate steadily dropped but remained primarily within the sixty percentile range. But in 2016 for the first time the USA saw that rate drop to 59.4%; then in 2020, even further to an all-time low of 54.4%.
During those decades the number of homicides declined almost 40% yet our police were only able to solve about 6 out of 10 cases. Now it is well under that bringing our cold unresolved homicide case load to more than 278,000 for the period 1980-2020. That is a lot of families without answers regarding the death of their loved ones.
While there are multiple contributing root factors, such as poverty, lack of education, unstable family structure, drugs and gangs, our homicide detectives are losing the battle to decreasing manpower, inadequate funding, and in our view, lack of specialty training.