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Comment by lr4444lr | Hacker News Reader

As society becomes more and more surveillance bound by cheap cameras and interconnected devices, the phenomenon of a cold and masterminding murderer terrorizing us for years with public media taunts, and yet eluding the authorities, seems more and more out of out possibility. Truly terrifying that this was a real story.

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That’s not even close to accurate, first the clearance rate has actually been falling.

The actual numbers are terrible: for every 100 homicides, 61 percent are cleared, and then 70 percent of those—43 cases—lead to conviction. And this assumes that the correct person is convicted. According to some estimates, four percent of inmates on death row are innocent. Wrongful conviction rates are assumed to be higher for lesser crimes since officials are less rigorous in establishing guilt when capital punishment is not on the table. https://fee.org/articles/most-violent-crimes-in-the-us-go-un...

Are terrible [in America]. First Google result when searching for other countries: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/147737081876484...

Here in Finland there was interesting example where someone was selling hitman services over tor-network. They caught him because he left a plastic bag in the crime scene, the plastic bag had a sticker, from that they could tell that it had been used to weight a banana and could also pin down the place and a time. They then used the surveillance footage in store to identify the person.

Reduce reuse recycle

It’s not easy to compare such rates between countries. Especially in terms of finding the correct killer vs someone to blame.

Also, “this study did not include cases of missing persons where no body was found. In all four countries, such cases are usually labelled as a disappeared person, even if the police strongly suspect a homicide. Following other studies (Sturup et al., 2015), because of the unknown nature of these cases (including potential suicides or voluntary disappearances), these cases have not been included in the study. This may have resulted in a general under-count of the total number of homicides, including an under-count of unsolved homicides.”

How many of those unsolved crimes involve a serial killer who taunts the police/public?

"That’s not even close to accurate, first the clearance rate has actually been falling."

While this is true, they are two different scenarios.

Clearance rate is generally low. However, if you have a serial killer thsy gains public attention they will dedicate order of magnitude more resources to that case. Frankly, a lot of murders don't even make the news, and many of those don't get very much in the way of resources from police. Then we have the circumstances around each murder. In some places, the people in the neighborhood don't want to get involved and talk. It's also more likely that you leave more evidence if you're committing additonal crimes.

So I agree with both of you - clearance rate is falling and it's less likely to have publicly known serial killers go unsolved.

I agree. It seems more or less impossible to commit a heinous crime these days and get away with it. I admit it's one positive outcome of our "surveillance state" (and I'm not implying Big Brother — people put Ring doorbells on their front doors, businesses and banks install cameras for security, etc).

On the contrary. Unsolved heinous crimes are still common. Here is one that disturbs me greatly. It is still unsolved to this day.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/Oakland-Chinese-Ch...

Looking at the homicide clearance stats of cities near where the Zodiac killer was active, it looks like getting away with it is at least as easy as it ever was.

Not true. Homicides are not equal nobody cares if a drug dealer is found dismembered. Totally rando civilians getting killed is what society cares about and those are down.

All homicides are down but clearance rates are terrible. I don't know of there is objective evidence to support your claims that murders of randos are routinely solved.

The United Kingdom is nothing if not a surveillance state, and their crime clearance rates are lower than ever. They seem to have a different set of priorities for their state surveillance apparatus.

It is an illusion that police are competent and that they solve most violent crimes they investigate.

On the other hand, the percentage of murders where they actually close the case keeps going down. It's a weird world we are living in.

Not much revenue in solving murders these days. Parking tickets is where it's at!

Of course in the past a lot of cases were "solved" by basically blaming the murder on a local vagrant who happened to be in the area of the crime. The fact that things like DNA evidence are making this untenable is actually a good thing even if it means fewer cases are closed.

But the murder rate is also going down. Seems like the less capable criminals know they can't as easily get away with it.

The sad truth is that they just don't care about most of the murders.

Isn't that the CSI effect? People assume they will be caught so they don't bother trying. The ones that do try, now have more info on how to avoid detection.

Murder rates are also down substantially since the 1990s. The leading theories include reduced lead exposure and fewer neglected and unwanted children thanks to reproductive healthcare. In either case, the missing murderers would’ve been more impulsive, more careless, and easier to catch. Many of the murders that go unsolved today, likely would’ve gone unsolved in the past, too.

Plus, some of the cleared murders in the past were simply blamed on innocent black men by a racist system. Look at the Innocence Project for examples. We still have a problem with all that, but surely it’s not as bad as it was in the 1970s.

Another contributing factor is that so much forensics and police resources are wasted on victimless drug crimes. It’s an lot easier to bust a corner boy selling drugs than to track down a murderer.

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