Tracking Vital Measures of Effectiveness
Police, prosecutors, and courts are the fundamental building blocks of our criminal justice system. Their ability to do their jobs and coordinate effectively is vital to holding offenders accountable and delivering justice for victims.
Two measures, homicide clearance rates and felony conviction rates, provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of the courts and policing in Chicago.
Improvements in these metrics are closely linked to lower violent crime rates and greater community trust and cooperation with the police. Together, they show whether Chicago’s justice system is improving in ways that reduce crime and improve public safety.
Methodology
Definitions
- Homicide Clearances: Clearance rates are a measure of the rate at which police identify a suspect and have established probable cause to make an arrest for a given type of crime. The FBI-sanctioned method of calculating homicide clearance rates is to divide the homicides solved in the year by the homicides reported in the year. In other words, clearance rates represent cases cleared in a given year regardless of the year the original incident occurred. A case clearance does not necessarily mean a conviction or even an arrest. The suspect(s) identified by police may be inaccessible (for example, deceased or having fled the jurisdiction), the State’s Attorney may not agree with the police that probable cause has been established, or they may not believe that they can prevail at trial.
- Felony Convictions: Felony convictions comprise cases with plea of guilty or a guilty verdict. A high rate of felony convictions means that the justice system is correctly identifying cases where it can prove guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt” and is effective at securing convictions either through a plea of guilty or obtaining a guilty verdict after a trial.
Sources
- Homicide Clearances: Chicago Police Department Annual Reports
- Felony Convictions: Cook County State Attorney’s Office Data Dashboard
Additional Notes
Reported clearance rates for homicides can be volatile because the number of reported homicides fluctuates year-to-year and homicide investigations are often multi-year endeavors. To understand if investigations are becoming more effective, it is important to look at long-term trends.