By Angelikka Factor
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – An analysis conducted by The Morning of the New York Times by journalist German Lopez sheds light on an astonishing reality in the American criminal justice system: almost half of America’s murders go unsolved. This failure, researchers warn, could deepen cycles of violence and erode trust in the system.
Families are left without justice, and communities are trapped in violence.
Reporting from Louisville, Lopez found that the city’s police department fails to make arrests in roughly 50 percent of homicide cases.
“In the United States, people often get away with murder,” Lopez writes.
In 2023, the national clearance rate—cases where someone is arrested—for murder was 58 percent.
Lopez explains that this rate includes cases from previous years that weren’t solved until a later date.
Damion Morton, who was fatally shot in 2017, is one of many examples of how this issue becomes deeply personal for victims’ families.
“I want someone to be held accountable for taking my son’s life,” said Morton’s mother. “But after eight years… I’m about to give up hope.”
According to Lopez, many factors contribute to low clearance rates, including overworked detectives, limited departmental resources, and deep mistrust in law enforcement.
“The number of cases overwhelms the police,” said Emily McKinley, a deputy police chief in Louisville.
Experts cited in the report argue that this lack of accountability sustains ongoing violence.
Brian Forst, a criminologist at American University, said, “When the bad guys see that the police are not there to deter crime and catch criminals… the rest of the community is less deterred from crime. They think, ‘Why not? I’m not going to get caught.’”
Lopez links this dynamic to criminologist Cesare Beccaria’s deterrence theory.
Beccaria argues that the effectiveness of the justice system depends on the severity of the punishment as well as the certainty and speed of justice.
“The certainty of being caught is a vastly more powerful deterrent than the punishment,” concluded the National Institute of Justice, cited in the report.
Lopez’s analysis highlights the socioeconomic and racial dimensions of the failure.
Communities most affected by unsolved murders—mainly Black and low-income—are the same ones subjected to both over-policing and under-protection.
In these communities, trust in the law remains fractured.
“Ordinary citizens are not going to want to cooperate with police when they see the police as alien storm troopers,” Forst explained.
Lopez notes that other nations, such as Germany and the U.K., maintain murder clearance rates between 70 and 90 percent.
The U.S. lags behind due to systemic problems, including easy access to firearms, gang-related crimes that are harder to solve, and a high volume of caseloads.
“We’ve gotten swamped over the years,” McKinley said.
Lopez acknowledges some potential solutions, including redirecting law enforcement resources toward solving violent crimes and expanding surveillance technology.
Boston, for example, enhanced its homicide protocols and increased funding, resulting in a 23 percent increase in clearance rates.
New York, using facial recognition and surveillance cameras, solved the murder of UnitedHealthcare executive Brian Thompson.
However, these technological advances raise privacy and civil liberties concerns.
“We have to have conversations about how to use the technology responsibly,” said Jennifer Doleac of Arnold Ventures.
Despite new anti-crime plans and initiatives in Louisville, the city’s murder clearance rate declined from 2023 to 2024.
Lopez emphasizes that the failure to hold murderers accountable remains one of the criminal justice system’s most pressing failures.
