Database reveals homicide-case closure rates, county by county and agency by agency

How many homicides in your area remain unsolved? Which of your local police agencies have the most cold cases? How do the homicides break down by race, ethnicity, sex and weapons used? The information is in a new database that you can easily search online. It was developed by Thomas Hargrove, right, of Scripps Howard News Service in reporting a story that begins, "Every year in America, 6,000 killers get away with murder. The percentage of homicides that go unsolved in the United States has risen alarmingly even as the homicide rate has fallen to levels last seen in the 1960s. Despite dramatic improvements in DNA analysis and other breakthroughs in forensic science, police fail to make an arrest in more than one-third of all homicides."

The problem is worst in big cities, but a spot check of rural counties shows some relatively low closure rates. For example, the sheriff's department in White County in Middle Tennessee has solved only 12 of 22 homicides from 1980 through 2008; the police department in the county seat of Sparta has solved five out of six. But overall, the data should please rural cops. Hargrove told Al Tompkins of The Poynter Institute, "Police in rural areas tend to be much more efficient in solving murders than authorities in major urban areas. That's because rural police often personally know the active criminals in their area and have fewer murders to solve, giving them more time to work a case."

Hargrove told Tompkins that the story can be (and probably should be) localized "anywhere in America. Reporters can see homicide clearance data for their communities at our site. Then they have to solve the mystery: Why is the homicide solution rate lower (or higher) than the national average? Why (generally) have murders become so much harder to solve in recent years than in the 1980s or 1990s?" In the interview and his story, Hargrove suggests ways closure rates can be improved. (Read more) To use the database, click here.