In 1962, 93 percent of all murders in America were solved. In 2020, more than 50 percent of murders went unsolved. What happened? Why is it so easy to get away with murder in the United States?

As with many terrible trends, the “Great Decline” in the murder clearance rate started in the mid-1960s. By the early 1970s, under 80 percent of murders went unsolved, and that number dropped to only 64 percent by the 1990s. That rate held constant for decades, until a precipitous drop to just under 50 percent in 2020.

Researchers have found a number of reasons for the decline. In the mid-1960s, the Supreme Court reshaped America’s justice system. In cases such as Gideon v. Wainwright (1963) and Miranda v. Arizona (1966), judges put forth new rights for the accused, including the right to state-provided counsel and what are now called Miranda Rights. These new rights made it much harder for police to arrest and interrogate suspects.

As I wrote in a previous Intellectual Takeout article:

In that case [Gideon v. Wainwright], the Warren Court freed a man convicted of larceny because the man could not afford legal counsel at his trial.

According to the Warren Court, the fact that the Sixth Amendment protects the right to counsel meant that if someone could not afford an attorney, the state had an obligation to provide him one. In other words, the state was to both prosecute and defend criminals—a clear conflict of interest and a serious drain on taxpayers.

In effect, the Court’s ruling made it harder to convict criminals. As Dr. Clarence Carson argues, when you lower the cost of committing crime, you should expect the quantity of crime to rise. And rise it did.

But the Court was not content to stop there. In 1964, it held that suspects have a right to an attorney before a trial; in fact, before even being interrogated by police. Just two years later, it created new rules for police to follow before they question arrestees. Those rules are now known as ‘Miranda rights.’

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Throughout the 1960s, the Warren Court overturned lower court decisions and allowed guilty criminals to go free because their Miranda rights had been violated. …

Miranda rights are now deeply embedded in American culture. It’s hard to imagine life without them. We’ve all heard, “You have the right to remain silent.…” Yet though it is important to preserve the rights of the accused, it is at least equally important to protect the rights of the victim.

Whether the Court’s rulings were justified or not, they had an undeniable tendency to reduce the costs of committing crime for the criminal while raising the costs of convicting those criminals for the state.

The economic logic is straightforward: When it’s more costly to arrest criminals, we should expect the supply of arrested criminals to decrease. The converse is also true: Lower costs of committing crime increases the supply of crime. So it shouldn’t be surprising that the violent crime rate more than doubled between 1960 and 1970. Meanwhile, murder clearance rates started their precipitous fall.

Yet the decline in the murder clearance rate can be attributed to other factors, too. For instance, guns were used in less than two-thirds of homicides in the early 1980s. Today, they are used in about 80 percent of murders. As one would expect, it tends to be easier for police to solve a crime carried out with a knife or bat than a gun.

In addition to weapon type, race also plays a significant role in the declining murder clearance rate. Until the early 1980s, homicides with a black victim were cleared at substantially higher rates than homicides with a white victim. However, by the end of the 1980s, that relationship had flipped. In 2019, about 75 percent of murders with a white victim were solved—while about 50 percent of murders with a black victim went unsolved.

This racial disparity has a huge impact on overall clearance rates. Though black Americans comprise about 14 percent of the overall population, they make up 55 percent of the murder victims, as of 2020. Thus, the low clearance rate of murders with a black victim is of such consequence that it may be the biggest reason for the drop in the overall clearance rate.

Why is the murder clearance rate so much lower for black victims than for white victims?

Some observers think that poor community relations explains the low murder clearance rate in black neighborhoods. They argue that since witnesses and family members are hesitant to speak with police, it’s much harder for detectives to identify and investigate suspects in black-victim cases. Yet, though this explanation is plausible, the data are murky.

Though there is no consensus on the reasons for the drop in the murder clearance rate for black-victim homicide, one thing is clear: Millions of Americans are no longer secure in their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Their government has let them down. This is a national scandal.

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