Getting away with murder
Television and film have done us wrong — so have books and plays — at least when it comes to murder. Most of the time, with some notable exceptions, homicides are eventually solved in the media we consume. That’s the whole point of the millions of procedural dramas airing at any given moment: to see the bad guys get caught.
Fiction teaches that it’s hard to get away with murder. But the reality is that, in our country, most murders go unsolved.
In fact, the United States is actually among the worst in the industrialized world at solving murders. To quote CNN, “The rate at which murders are solved or ‘cleared’ has been declining for decades, [and] dropped to slightly below 50% in 2020” — compared to Germany’s 90%. This represents “a new historic low.” Meanwhile, in some cities, such as Chicago, the rates have dipped into the low-30s.
In recent years, Illinois governors are more likely to go to jail than Illinois murderers: Homicide clearance rates in the state hover below 40%, while three of the previous seven governors have been jailed.
According to KDKA, Pittsburgh’s numbers halfway through 2022 were in the low-30% range — a steep decline from over 75% in 2018, worse than the national average and closer to Chicago than we like to be.
Criminologist and former FBI Agent Larry Likar told KDKA that that sends a message. “The perpetrators are going to know there’s a lower rate of solving cases, because they know people who commit these murders get away with it.”
When I was a kid, I watched so many movies about the future, where technologically advanced detectives solved crimes effortlessly — or even before they happened. No one imagined that more and more people would be getting away with murder in 2022 than in 1995.
All those stories assumed that police detectives would have the necessary resources to do their jobs well: futuristic technology, whole teams focused on a single case and, most importantly, time. But in real life, crime doesn’t stop while quirky young scientists process fragments of hair, or grizzled detectives set up elaborate bulletin boards. As crime rates go up while police staffing goes down, the backlog for attention gets longer and longer.
Project: Cold Case, an organization that works with family members of victims, lists more than 340 entries for Allegheny County and Pittsburgh. That’s over 300 families in our area who will never know who murdered their loved one, and the number is only going up as clearance rates go down.
The reasons are multi-faceted: There are fewer police detectives today than before, as departments struggle with shortages. Increases in other crimes, especially during the pandemic, have diverted resources away from homicide. Fewer witnesses are willing to step up as distrust of the police grows.
More and more specialized police work is required, such as using social media and other forms of digital canvassing to solve murders, and fewer police officers have the time or ability to complete extensive training in these subjects.
Then there’s the issue of weaponry. Roughly 80% of murders are committed with guns today, up from 70% in the 1990s. A gun can be fired from farther away, which in turn leaves less physical evidence and usually involves fewer witnesses. While investigative techniques have improved, CSI-style scientific certainty remains a distant, and perhaps impossible goal.
High-profile murder cases have spoiled us. We’re inclined to believe that murderers are caught by diligent investigation by highly trained experts — with forensic analysis and ballistics at the ready. But the truth is that those specialists are rare and expensive, and most police departments lack the resources to employ them, or they are so overburdened that they eventually leave the force due to burnout.
I believed in a future where every murder mattered, where every intentional death would be investigated and every perpetrator brought to justice. “Getting away with murder” was something fictional characters occasionally did.
According to the Office of Justice Programs, 9 out of every 10 murders on television are solved. As they noted, “If television represented the clearance rate and the characteristics of suspects more accurately, structural solutions to crime would become much more appealing to the public.”
The last time the U.S. had a 90% murder clearance rate was in the 1960s. Today, that number is just as fantastical as the TV shows themselves — unless you live in Germany.