Environmental Factors Influencing Urban Homicide Clearance Rates: A Spatial Analysis of New York City

Kennedy, L., Caplan, J., Piza, E. and Thomas, A. (2020)

Homicide Studies, DOI: 10.1177/1088767920976183

Abstract:

In this paper, we explore the conditions under which clearance rates improve by
looking at the experience across New York City. Using one agency provides a control
on the administrative differences that appear across other jurisdictions that have
been studied, usually through cross-national analysis. Our analysis uses Risk Terrain Modeling (RTM) to identify environmental features that relate to closed versus open homicide cases using two years of New York City Police Department (NYPD) data. This analysis is supplemented with an investigation of precinct-wide social structure variables to examine how context matters in influencing closure rates.