An 18-state sample of statewide crime clearance rates shows improvement in 2024, but not as steeply as crime rates dropped. Crime analyst Jeff Asher's latest report is based on data from the states that have already published all or nearly all of their 2024 data. Those 18 states have been reliable gauges of nationwide trends, Asher said. The data show small increases in murder, violent crime, and property crime clearance rates for the year. "Clearance rates tend to rise a good deal when crime counts fall so I expected a big increase in clearance rates last year, but that did not quite show up in the data," he wrote. "Still, another increase in national murder clearance rates would put them closer to (but likely still below) the pre-COVID rates."
Clearance rates for murder specifically and violent crime overall both rose 1.2 percent in the sample of states, but property crime clearance rates behaved completely differently with a much larger 1.4 percent increase in that sample. "This was again a somewhat surprising result as I expected a bigger increase in property crime clearances given the large drop in motor vehicle thefts reported this year," Asher wrote. "All of this data is preliminary and it covers fewer than 40 percent of the states in our union, but the available data points to small-ish increases in clearance rates nationally last year. That does not mean that every state or agency is seeing an increase, and it also does not mean that there is not tons of room for improvement in clearance rates. But it does point to the continued reversal of a trend that had gotten severely worse between 2020 and 2022."
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