future criminologist
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Just wanted to add a statistic that I found interesting. "National clearance rates for murder and manslaughter have fallen from about 90 percent in the 1960s to below 65 percent in recent years."
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4179/is_20100530/ai_n53834829/
Wanted to add my 2 cents on this statistic, I apologize if it's OT - we don't know how many of those cases were later overturned and exonerated due to DNA evidence years later, and or faulty eyewitness identification. In those days, all cops had to go on were eyewitnesses or fingerprints. Don't get me wrong, I am a big fan of LE and come from several generations of cops, but I think of all these guys who have been exonerated in recent years who were convicted back then, and I have to think that old-school racism played a big factor in some of these convictions from the 1960s as well. Also, think of how many rape cases went unreported or unprosecuted. Very often you couldn't convict a rape case back then, prior to DNA, and you had prosecutors who didn't think it worth the time to take to trial. On the flip side of the impact that DNA evidence has had, I think prosecutors are more aware of how important physical evidence is to a jury now, and there may be less of a rush to go to trial without DNA - a case could wait years to get the right evidence. All of this is IMO, of course.