LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – The Michigan State Police Criminal Justice Information Center releases a “Crime in Michigan Annual Report” every year and the statistics on clearance rates in the 2021 report are quite concerning.

To clarify the statistics that are being reported, a “clearance” rate does not document a resolution of a criminal event. It doesn’t mean that there has been a completed trial or plea deal.

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In Michigan, a cleared incident means that a crime was cleared by arrest or exceptional clearance. Exceptional clearance is defined as all of the the following criteria applying to a case: investigation must clearly and definitively establish the identity of at least one offender; sufficient probable cause must support the arrest, charging and prosecution of the offender; the exact location of the offender must be known so an arrest could be made; and there must be a reason outside the control of law enforcement that prevents the arrest. (This includes death of offender, victim refused to cooperate in prosecution, etc.)

Keeping that in mind, even getting a crime to the point of a clearance is happening at an astonishingly low rate in Michigan. There were 46 crimes which showed a 20% or less clearance rate. The Michigan Incident Crime Reporting Program (MICR) collects information on 107 offense file classes and crime methodology divides crimes into four
categories including crimes against persons, property, society and “all other.”

Some of the clearance rates documented in the report include the following:
• Murder/Nonnegligent Manslaughter (Voluntary): 42%
• Kidnapping/Abduction: 27.3%
• Sexual Penetration – multiple classifications: 18.9 to 25.6%
• Intimidation/Stalking: 13.5%
• Robbery: 20.5%
• Carjacking: 32.6%
• Arson: 16.7%
• Burglary/Forced Entry: 14.7%
• Motor Vehicle Theft: 9.4%
• Welfare Fraud: 3.0%
• Identity Theft Fraud: 2.1%
• Retail Fraud Theft: 34.4%
• Hit & Run Motor Vehicle Accident: 13.6%

The highest clearance rates involved public peace other (89%); weapons offense concealed (84.1%); escape/flight (74.4%); obstructing justice (70.4%); narcotic equipment violations (69.2%); and liquor violations other (67.5%).
The highest number of incidents listed in the 2021 report include 79,775 non-aggravated assaults; 38,226 incidents of damage to property and 35,778 incidents of obstructing justice.

The MICR is based on a data collection program implemented by the FBI in 1989 that is called the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS). Michigan’s MICR is the state’s version of that and was certified by the FBI in 1994.

In 2005, the MICR became the only method of collecting crime data from all of Michigan’s law enforcement agencies. The crime data is collected locally in the form of police reports which produces a subset of data that is collected and forwarded to the MICR program, which in turns forwards the information on to the NIBRS who produces the national annual reports of crimes.

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The MICR collects more offense classifications and crime data elements than the NIBRS in order to provide a more complete picture of the crime in the state. Additionally, some Tribal Agencies submit their crime information directly to NIBRS and is not included in MICR’s annual Crime in Michigan Report.

According to the Marshall Project, a non-profit journalism website about criminal justice, “Clearance has long been the primary metric that law enforcement agencies use to assess their effectiveness at solving crime. Low or declining clearance rates often lead to increased political pressure on police leadership and calls for more hiring or funding.”