Explaining homicide clearance: An analysis of Chicago Homicide data 1965-1995

This study examined the Homicide in Chicago data 1965-1995 to further understand the effect of victim, incident, and environmental characteristics on homicide clearance. The hypotheses tested are formulated from a police perspective with the intent to capture how different types of victims, circumstances of homicides, and officers' immediate work environment may influence homicide clearance. The findings demonstrate that a perspective based on psychological, situational, and environmental impact on police work may serve as an alternative explanation for homicide clearance to the social conflict perspective that focuses on the effect of preconceived or predisposed officer bias, and to the equal aggressiveness perspective that argues that officers work equally hard for all homicide cases due to the heinousness of such crime.