Police solve 15% of REPORTED burglaries. Factor in unreported burglaries, and the number probably goes under the MoE, and the real picture emerges: burglaries are only ever solved by accident.
Bang!
The under reporting of crimes is probably very wide spread for many reason.
Car thefts and hard crimes like murder, rape, armed robbery and assault are probably better stats to look at.
Years ago after I retired, we thought about moving to a three communities.
Our longtime insurance agent heard that we were interested and did some checking on stolen vehicles and the above hard crimes.
The rates of stolen autos and crimes like assault eliminated two of the communities with local newspaper reports re reported crime. This agent and his peers felt that these were directly related to rampant drug use in those communities. The druggies stole to buy drugs. Much of what they stole was not reported. Stolen cars are usually reported and showed a higher level of crime.
The cops massage the stats to make it look good and it keeps their bosses and the politicians happy.
A decade of mandatory sentencing has reduced crime to almost acceptable levels.
Almost.
Keep that in mind next time you hear somebody suggest the mandatory sentencing laws should be "relaxed".
For my files.
This is why we track murders... It's given to wild swings unless you've got a truly ENORMOUS sample population (like, say, O, New York?) But there's no fudging the numbers.
Thanks for the very interesting post & ping.