If you were murdered today, statistical data suggests there is only about a 60 percent chance that law enforcement would identify and charge the person responsible. For rape cases, that figure drops to roughly three percent. Five decades ago, crime-solving rates were dramatically higher. Understanding what changed reveals uncomfortable truths about how modern policing allocates its time, money, and attention.

Murder Clearance Rates Have Fallen Dramatically Since the 1960s

In criminal justice, clearance rates measure the percentage of reported crimes that result in charges being filed. In 1965, the United States murder clearance rate exceeded 90 percent. Since then, it has declined to an average below 65 percent annually.

This decline has occurred despite several factors that should have made solving murders easier. The actual number of murders has decreased over this period. Law enforcement now has access to DNA analysis, advanced forensic laboratories, and sophisticated surveillance technologies. Constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure have been significantly eroded, giving police broader investigative powers. Yet crimes continue to go unsolved at alarming rates.

Hundreds of Thousands of Rape Kits Sit Untested

The crisis extends well beyond homicide investigations. According to Department of Justice data, more than 400,000 rape kits remain untested in police evidence rooms across the country, with some estimates placing the number closer to one million.

This backlog has devastating consequences. Roughly three percent of reported rape cases in America result in an arrest and prosecution. Many of these untested kits have a high probability of producing matches, since a significant number of sexual assault perpetrators are repeat offenders whose DNA already exists in criminal databases. In numerous cases, victims have identified their attackers by name, but prosecution stalls because physical evidence has never been processed.

Where Police Time and Resources Actually Go

The question of why crime-solving rates have declined becomes clearer when examining how law enforcement departments allocate their resources. Civil asset forfeiture — the practice of seizing cash, vehicles, and property from individuals suspected of criminal activity — generates direct revenue for police departments. Arresting low-level drug offenders and confiscating their possessions is financially productive. Writing citations for traffic violations, equipment infractions, and other minor offenses generates consistent income.

Investigating murders and processing rape kits, by contrast, produces no direct revenue. The economic incentives within modern policing have shifted departmental focus away from solving violent crimes and toward activities that sustain budgets and generate income.

The War on Drugs Destroyed Police-Community Relations

The ongoing enforcement of drug prohibition has fundamentally altered the relationship between police and the communities they serve. As former DEA Senior Intelligence Specialist Sean Dunagan has observed, the war on drugs has caused people to stop viewing police as protectors and instead see them as potential persecutors.

Ed Burns, a former Baltimore narcotics and homicide detective, has described the dynamic in stark terms: once a police department becomes adversarial to its community, information stops flowing. Residents stop cooperating. Tips dry up. Without community cooperation, police become limited to solving only the crimes that are easiest to pursue — primarily drug possession arrests — while violent crime investigations suffer.

This breakdown matters because solving homicides and sexual assaults depends heavily on witness cooperation, community trust, and information sharing. When millions of people are imprisoned for nonviolent drug offenses, the resulting erosion of trust makes all other crime-solving harder.

The Corporatist Prison System Creates Demand for Inmates

The private prison industry operates on contracts that frequently require occupancy rates between 95 and 100 percent. This contractual structure creates a perverse economic incentive: the system requires a steady supply of new prisoners to remain profitable.

These facilities are funded entirely by taxpayer dollars despite the “private” label. Unlike a truly private enterprise that would seek to minimize costs by reducing its population, the corporatist prison model depends on maintaining maximum occupancy. The result is an economic ecosystem that benefits from criminalizing as many people as possible.

Who Profits from Keeping Drug Laws Strict

The political machinery sustaining drug prohibition is maintained by several major lobbying interests:

• Police unions represent the largest lobbying group pushing to maintain drug criminalization. Without drug enforcement, departments face significant budget and personnel reductions.
• Private prison corporations continuously lobby for stricter sentencing laws to maintain their taxpayer-funded revenue streams.
• Alcohol and beer companies spend millions opposing legalization of substances that would compete with their products at lower price points.
• Pharmaceutical corporations benefit from keeping natural alternatives classified as illegal while marketing synthetic versions of the same compounds. The Schedule I classification of marijuana — defined as having “no medical use” — persists even as pharmaceutical companies sell synthetic THC products.
• Prison guard unions lobby to preserve the incarceration rates that justify their employment levels.

Police Solve Crimes When They Choose To

The claim that violent crimes are inherently difficult to solve does not hold up under scrutiny. University of Maryland criminologist Charles Wellford has pointed to the clearance rate for homicides of on-duty police officers as a revealing example. These cases typically involve the very characteristics that make crimes hardest to solve: they occur in communities with low overall clearance rates, they involve strangers, and witnesses face potential retaliation. Yet these cases are almost always cleared.

The disparity demonstrates that investigative resources and institutional willpower — not inherent difficulty — are the primary determinants of whether crimes get solved.

Signs of Change in Drug Policy

There are indications that the framework sustaining these dynamics is beginning to shift. Multiple states have moved to decriminalize or fully legalize marijuana, defying federal drug scheduling. Colorado and Washington served as early catalysts, followed by Oregon, Alaska, and Washington D.C. Medical marijuana legislation has become a regular feature of state-level debates, and some proposals have sought to deregulate cannabis entirely, treating it as an ordinary agricultural product.

As more jurisdictions move away from criminalizing drug possession, the financial incentives driving mass incarceration and aggressive enforcement will continue to weaken. The question is whether law enforcement resources will be redirected toward the violent crimes that continue to go unsolved — the murders without justice and the rape kits collecting dust in evidence rooms across the country.