By Thomas Stevenson – The Postmillennial
Nearly half of all murderers in the United States get away with the crime, with only 58 percent of murder cases being solved in the nation where someone is arrested, according to FBI data from 2023 cited by the New York Times.
The outlet added, “In other words, a murderer’s chance of getting caught within a year essentially comes down to a coin flip.” For other crimes, the rate of arrest and solving of the issue is even lower, with the example of car thefts only resulting in 8 percent of perpetrators getting detained.
In other countries similar to the US, the cases solved rate for murders is usually higher, around the 70, 80 or 90 percent marks. Multiple factors have played into the statistic, the outlet reported, including the distrust of police, lack of resources, as well as the number of cases, and the lack of consequences allows for criminals to get away with more.
“It’s a vicious cycle,” criminologist Brian Frost told reporters. “When the bad guys see that the police are not there to deter crime and catch criminals, they remain on the streets to do more bad stuff. And the rest of the community is less deterred from crime. They think, ‘Why not? I’m not going to get caught.’”
According to the Times, American policy makers have focused on the severity of punishment for a crime more so than other means to deter criminality. Other means to deter crime includes the swiftness and certainty that the criminal is found.
The National Institute of Justice in its review of evidence relating to criminality in the US concluded that “The certainty of being caught is a vastly more powerful deterrent than the punishment.” If a criminal is never caught, the individual feels more emboldened to commit more crime.