50% of U.S. murders now going unsolved
Author of the article:Brad Hunter
Published Jul 07, 2025 • Last updated 16 hours ago • 3 minute read
If you are murdered in the United States, there’s a 50% chance your killing is going to go cold.
According to The New York Times, in cities like Louisville, Kentucky, police don’t even make an arrest in half of their homicide investigations.
The problem is nationwide, the Times reported. While the clearance rate was 58% in 2023, that number is inflated because it includes homicides from previous years that the police solved in 2023.
For comparison, the homicide clearance rate in Canada is around 70% The Toronto Police Service’s clearance rate is one of the highest in North America, with an 80% solve rate over the past five years.
Experts in the U.S. claim the volume of investigations and distrust of the police have stymied countless murder probes. And the fact that solving a case has come down to a flip of the coin, criminals have become emboldened.
“It’s a vicious cycle,” Brian Forst, a criminologist at American University, told the Times. “When the bad guys see that the police are not there to deter crime and catch criminals, they remain on the streets to do more bad stuff. And the rest of the community is less deterred from crime. They think, ‘Why not? I’m not going to get caught.’”
Experts say the most powerful deterrent to violent crime is the would-be killer knowing cops will catch them quickly. The idea that they will be captured and punished somewhere down the road doesn’t work.
“The certainty of being caught is a vastly more powerful deterrent than the punishment,” concluded the National Institute of Justice in its review of the evidence.
Most of the victims in the mounting tally of unsolved murders are poor and Black.
“Take a bunch of teenage boys from the whitest, safest suburb in America and plunk them down in a place where their friends are murdered and they are constantly attacked and threatened,” author Jill Leovy wrote in Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America.
“Signal that no one cares, and fail to solve murders. Limit their options for escape. Then see what happens.”
Experts told the Times there are five key reasons why murder investigations go cold.
– Lack of attention and police resources. Cops in New York and Boston boast the country’s highest clearance rate because they are well-funded.
– America has more guns than any other country in the world. A firearms murder is harder to solve than a stabbing. In 2023, the U.S. homicide rate with guns was 4.4 per 100,000; in Canada, it was 0.7 per 100,000.
– The U.S. also has more gang crime than other Western nations. These crimes are harder to solve.
– For sheer volume, no one can touch the U.S. More murders and fewer cops is a recipe for disaster. One detective noted, “We are swamped.”
– A long history of distrust between the cops and the community harms homicide detectives’ ability to solve murders.
The American murder rate has dropped dramatically since the 1990s, when battles over crack turf turned city streets into slaughterhouses. But for the above-mentioned reasons, murder remains as American as apple pie.
More resources and modern technology could provide an Rx to stem the march to the morgue.
But in the end, murder is about the victims, their friends and families.
“I want someone to be held accountable for taking my son’s life,” said Delphine Prentice, the mother of Damion Morton, who was shot and killed in 2017.
But after eight years, she added, “I’m about to give up hope.”
bhunter@postmedia.com
@HunterTOSun
If you are murdered in the United States, there's a 50% chance your killing is going to go cold.
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