According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, in 2004 the national clearance rate was 62.6%. That’s up from 62.4 in 2003%. However, in an FBI preliminary report, murder was up 2.1% nationally in the first six months of 2005 (with the greatest increase in the midwest, 4.9%). The year before, murder had gone down 5.7% […]

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History of Capital Punishment in New York. 1778-1887: hanging 1888-1964: electrocution 1965-1973: no death penalty 1974-1977: electrocution 1978-1994: no death penalty 1995-present: lethal injection (Except, isn’t it in limbo somehow now?) From the Bureau of Justice website: In 2005, 60 persons in 16 States were executed — 19 in Texas; 5 each in Indiana, Missouri, […]

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A great piece about unsolved murder by Rocco Paranscandola was in Newsday on January 10th. Of course I immediately wrote a letter to the editor explaining the rate at which murders are cleared over time, and how that changes clearance rates. The police department also told Newsday that in the late 1990’s their clearance rates […]

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Clearance rates don’t change all that much, but it’s interesting that when the homicide rate in New York was at it’s highest, the NYPD was also solving the highest precentage of murders. (1990 was the peak for murder in New York. The murder rate started going down after that.) And now that the murder rate […]

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