The (Mis)Use of Exceptional Clearance for Violent and Property Crimes reported to Law Enforcement

Once a crime is reported to law enforcement and founded, it may result in two outcomes: remain open or be cleared. While the latter is assumed is to be done via arrest, cases may be exceptionally cleared which despite identifying an offender, the individual is neither arrested nor prosecuted for the crime, thus any deterrent the criminal justice system may impose is negated and may even further embolden the offender due to the lack of an official response. As such, these cases more closely resemble incidents that remain open in that no offender is held accountable for their actions despite a verifiable crime having occurred with sufficient evidence to arrest and prosecute an individual. However, most research on case outcomes excludes exceptional clearances or only compares arrest with exceptional clearance. This multilevel study seeks to assess the impact of victim, offender, and incident characteristics as well as community and law enforcement characteristics associated with the outcome of the case (open, arrest, and exceptional clearance) for violent (homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault) and property crimes (burglary, motor vehicle theft, and larceny-theft) in the United States as well as agency variation in clearance rates.

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