From a recent piece in the Wall Street Journal about the homicide clearance rates for 2012: “When the cold cases aren’t included, the NYPD solved 57% of the year’s 419 homicides, said Paul Browne, chief spokesman for the NYPD.” He’s referring to the practice of including homicides from previous years that have been cleared this […]

[Read more →]

There’s a great article by Matt Stiles and Terri Langford in the Houston Chronicle called “Murder figures can be hard to solve.” From the article: Dr. Charles Wellford, professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Maryland, pointed out how a police “cold case” unit in Kansas City brought another 15 solved cases […]

[Read more →]

I was just reading a piece in the Boston Globe titled, Hub police show no gain in solving homicides. There’s a lot I could say, but I’m caught up in the inauguration excitement and not very focused.   A few things in the piece jumped out at me. “He beefed up the unit to 25 […]

[Read more →]

I have a few articles I want to link to. In keeping with my ongoing obsession with evidence storage, the first is to a Newark Star-Ledger article by Guy Sterling and Rick Hepp titled, N.J.’s lack of rules for storing forensic evidence hinders convicts. It begins:   “In 1991, two years after the first DNA […]

[Read more →]