Visualizing Homicide Clearance Rates

Amelia R. Coyne
Dr. Scott Alberts and Dr. Arlen Egley, Faculty Mentors

    In criminal justice, a homicide clearance rate is calculated by dividing the number of homicides that are solved, meaning the case ends with an arrest or identification of a suspect who can't be apprehended, by the total number of homicides recorded. In order to visualize homicide rates in the United States from 1965 to now, an R Shiny app that has interactive maps, graphs, and charts was created. This project utilizes FBI crime reports, data from the Government Finance Data Query System, and data from the Economic Policy Institute. The visualizations illustrate the patterns of homicide clearance rates across all 50 states for the past 60+ years, and it analyzes factors that potentially influence the clearance rate. Since 1965, the homicide clearance rate in the United States has been generally decreasing, and while the income gap between the top 10% and the bottom 90% is highly correlated with clearance rate, police budget was not.

Keywords: homicide, clearance, data science, visualization, R Shiny, R

Topic(s):Statistics
Justice Systems

Presentation Type: Oral Presentation

Session: TBA
Location: TBA
Time: TBA