What San Jose’s 100% homicide clearance rate tell us

Jillian Snider, a former veteran NYPD police officer who is now a Resident Senior Fellow at the R Street Institute in Washington, D.C. and a lecturer at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, said while a homicide clearance rate is not definitive, she aligns with Barg in what it means broadly.

“I urge people to not think of clearance rates as the … definition of good policing, but it is one of our main metrics in which we quantifiably measure police,” Snider said. “But when you’re in a community that has relatively lower rates of violent crime than the national average, that neighborhood itself will have a higher level of collective efficacy. The neighborhood cares about itself.”

Snider recently published a research paper analyzing middling case clearances in police agencies across the country, including for homicides, and outlining the challenges that get in the way. The biggest problems she identified are areas where San Jose seems to be doing relatively well.

“If you don’t have willing participation, you don’t have enough evidence or corroboration to effect an arrest. And that’s one of the biggest issues that you see in metropolitan areas that are seeing horrible clearance rates because no one wants to talk to police because they don’t trust them,” Snider said. “You have a big difference in the relationship between the police and the community in San Jose than you do in other jurisdictions where there’s more contention…”  

San Jose also has a manageable homicide caseload compared to similarly sized cities. Snider dryly points out that “it’s easier to close 100% of your cases when you don’t have that many cases to begin with…” 

Snider says it’s important for the public to keep in mind what a homicide clearance tells for the larger public safety picture, and perhaps more importantly, what it doesn’t. 

“They hear ‘case cleared or ‘case closed,’ and they assume the bad guy got arrested, the prosecutor got it, the judge found them guilty, and they’re going to prison for the rest of their lives,” she said. “In reality, you know that of all arrests made, barely around 10% of them actually see trial. Most of them are pled out way earlier. Homicides, of course, are a little different than your standard crime and those obviously take a lot longer … People just need to understand that 100% clearance does not mean 100% guilty verdicts in court.”