Crime Solvability

This is from an announcement I made on 9-4-22, in response to my students answers on a discussion board question about crimes with the highest solvability. It is also a reminder about the many assumptions the general public makes about many things in our criminal justice system which are just not true and not even close to being true.

Posted on: Sunday, September 4, 2022 11:47:20PM CDT

Hello class,

Remember that at the beginning of class I told you all to drop your emotion and all the crap you think is good information on social media? Trust me, with few exceptions, it's crap. Don't get me wrong, with information and entertainment, I look at just as much crap as you guys. I don't want you to stop looking at crap, just know you are looking at crap. Crap is not data. Crap is crap.

Time for the compliment sandwich. As taught by Stewie Griffin.

Begin Compliment Sandwich

Compliment - So let me say that you guys are doing fine as a class and are having friendly, professional discussions. 

Need Improvement - You guys have some challenges answering the question asked, actually looking at data presented to you, and not letting your pre-existing biases and emotion interfere with your thought.

Compliment - I enjoy teaching you all and reading your opinions. 

End Compliment sandwich. Notice the criticism is between two compliments so you are likely to forget being mad at me.


Let's focus on the question which confounds everyone. What crime has the highest solvability rate?  

This can be counterintuitive for most people who are not involved in law enforcement or in the court system. By counterintuitive I mean that we assume murder is hard to solve - well because it's murder. The best mystery, who-done-it movies are about murder, not theft. It was "Murder on the Orient Express" - not theft. The popular TV series in the 80s was called "Murder She Wrote" not Theft she Wrote. The popular show, "How to Get Away with Murder", not How to Get Away with Theft.

However, murder is by-far the easiest crime to solve. And it's really easy to see why, if we think critically.

Why is murder easier to solve than other crimes? What the data show is actually common-sense as well if we think about it logically. Most unsolved crimes are unsolved because there is a lack of evidence or "leads" for law enforcement to follow. "Leads" means where do we go from here? If your house is burglarized while you were at work, how often does that crime get solved? Well, the data tells us 13.5% of the time. That's kind of pathetic right? Not really. There are usually no suspects and very few "leads". The burglary is not likely someone you know and your house can be a target regardless of your personal life or activities. 

But let's say you are murdered in your house. We couldn't find your TV or who took it when you were burglarized but when we find your body we can likely find your murderer. How often? The data (that I provided you in the FBI document) shows that 61.6 percent of murders are "cleared", meaning, solved.

Why? Because there is likely a connection between you and who killed you. Murder is a more personal crime and the link between you and your murderer makes it easier to solve. Yes, it is still a complicated and complex investigation but the first part of any investigation is "leads". Who could have or would have killed you? That is the question. If you are a female, there is more than a 50% chance the killer was your significant other (boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife). I have seen this data (murder by significant other) go as high as 70% in 2007 - https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/fvv.pdf . 

Remember the case of Brian Laundrie and his girlfriend who disappeared while they were on vacation together? You guys and all of America couldn't get enough of that case. Probably because he and his girlfriend filmed every second of their life on social media. For me, that case was BOOOORIING!! Statistically, that is.

Let's face it, it was hardly the murder mystery of the year. Rather obvious with facts and statistics. It was boring because statistically speaking, the "significant other" is likely the killer. My classroom class couldn't get enough talking about it and the media camped out on Brian Laundrie-watch for weeks while we all speculated why the police didn't arrest him. Easy question, they had to find the body first. She was "missing" for a while. Once they found the body, the arrest warrant came after that, and then Brian killed himself out in the woods leaving a notebook confession behind. Yawn. Wake me up when that crap was over. I fell asleep after the first news flash about it. Social media liked it because social media loves to hate and judge. That's what social media does best. But when facts come around, social media is missing in action - always is. 

Here is a link in case some of you missed it - https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/21/us/gabby-petito-notebook-brian-laundrie/index.html.

Shows like "How to Get Away with Murder" and many other movies show very complex murders involving lots of planning and premeditation and plots to steal millions of dollars or take over the world. In real life murder and, most violent crime is about the dumbest crime there is. Statistically, violent crimes are not well-planned, very emotional acts of anger and stupidity yielding  $30 dollars in armed robberies and killing people because they "disrespected" someone's girlfriend. I am not making light of the crime or the motives, but most people are stunned when they find out why someone killed someone else. He cut me off in traffic so I shot him.

With murder, most people get caught and that is statistically provable. It doesn't mean that there are not sophisticated acts of murder and cases that are hard to crack. Of course, there are. But the question put to you as a class was, WHICH CRIME IS EASIER TO SOLVE? Murder is, and the contest is not even a close call.

Now I know what some of you are thinking and maybe asking, "Lorenz what about serial killers? They are so hard to catch! Evil geniuses they are!!!" Not so fast. Remember why murders are easy to solve? Because there is usually a connection between the killer and the victim. Serial killers get away with killing for so long because they kill strangers. They are not killing people out of anger or because someone called them a bad name. They are fulfilling a need, usually sexual in nature, and they can wait days, months, or years between killings. With some exceptions, serial killers kill people to whom they are sexually attracted. Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacey killed men because they were both homosexuals. If they were heterosexual their victims would have been women. Using Dahmer and Gacey as case-study examples, we find that their methods were not all that brilliant and they weren't crimes of the century. They were not evil geniuses. And contrary to movies, real life doesn't have danger-music that warns you when a bad person approaches. Serial killers are often nice people who, superficially, get along well with others. If I could choose any criminal to have as a neighbor, I would choose a serial killer. They are quiet and keep to themselves, rarely kill people who live near them, and generally want to stay off the radar. My kind of neighbor. 

It is often years before we even figure out that many unsolved murders were killed by the same "unknown" killer. Even when we do manage to link the killings, it may take a while to find the killer. Gacey buried all of his victims under his house. What got Gacey caught is a witness who saw one of the last victims going to meet with Gacey, and he was never seen again. The "link" that gave police the suspect to hunt. All of the evidence police needed was buried under his house. Once they had the lead, they developed probable cause and then got a search warrant. Gacey killed people for years. They were unsolved killings because he killed people he didn't know. His wife and his family never knew he was a killer. Why would be surprised no one else did either? 

So you see, DATA gives us the answers. If we will just pay attention to it. Know it. Love it. Live it.

I like all of the thought you guys are putting into whether or not crimes are reported and motives and just societal beliefs. Keep putting that stuff in there. Just make sure you answer the question posed first. Then you can dig down into the details which might provide some context to what makes the numbers what they are. It's okay to have the wrong impression about something we have never researched before. That is what this class and getting an education are all about. I comment to you guys individually on many of your posts privately. If you notice, I don't count off just because you guys have an opinion different than mine. I may tell you why I think you are wrong, but as long as you answer the question or viewed the data and just misinterpreted it, I give you full credit. Just make sure you actually answer the question. Read it twice. Some answers had nothing to do with what is asked. It's how conversations drift off sometimes. 

Keep up the good work and keep digging and responding and remember we are all learning all the time. Even me. 

In case some of you didn't open the PDF, here are the highlights of the data.

Notice how many more serious crimes we solve than non-serious crimes. 

I posted this on the discussion board. Feel free to comment and chime in.

Respectfully,

Lorenz