Legal Issues

The National Incident-Based Reporting System
The National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) is a new program that is aimed at helping law enforcement agencies to be in a better position to information that pertains to incident level clearance. This is as a result of a failure in the current Supplementary Homicide Report (SHR) that is under the Uniform Crime Reporting Program to specify whether a murder offence has been cleared (Addington, 2006). Clearance in this case refers to solving of a murder case where the offender could both be arrested and charged in a court of law or could either die or extradition is denied.

Under the National Incident-Based Reporting System, there are two proxies that are used in analyzing clearance. The first proxy is the unknown offender measure while the second is the unknown offender demographics measure (Addington, 2006). Of interest here is the second proxy which identifies cleared and uncleared cases on the basis of a number of clearance predictors that include demographic data of the offender as well as other predictors such as the weapon used in the murder. According to the findings of Addington, clearance of murder cases was based on age of the victim, weapon used, location of the murder, and number of victims.

The murders of young victims were more probable to be cleared than those that were involving older victims (Addington, 2006). It was also found that cases in which a knife or contact weapon was used were more probable to be cleared than those cases which involved the use of a firearm.

The findings also established that cases that involved more than one victim were more likely to be cleared as compared to cases involving only one victim (Addington, 2006). The rest of the paper will look at whether murders committed in the San Antonio area from 2007 to 2009 were cleared on the basis of demographics (age, race and sex), weapon, and more than one victim.

Results for 2007
In 2007, a total of 135 homicides were recorded with 75 of these cases being cleared. A total of 122 homicides were cleared though most of them adhered only to the age clearance predictor. The other predictors of weapon and the number of victim did not match with the findings. Most of the cleared murders involved victims who were young with most of them being born after 1970 as opposed to those that were not cleared that had most of the victims being born before 1970.

Race and sex were not found to be clearance predictors though most of the cleared cases involved male victims though race was equally varied. Most of the cleared cases involved the use of a firearm which is contrary to the findings that established the use of a knife or contact weapon as he clearance predictor. Only a small number of the cleared cases involved the use of a knife or bodily force. All of the cleared cases involved only one victim which also differed with the findings that found more than one victim as a clearance predictor.

Results for 2008
In 2008, a total of 137 homicides were committed with 118 homicides out of the total number being cleared. This resulted in a 77 clearance rate which was 2 higher than that recorded in the previous year. Most of the cleared cases involved victims who were young being born after 1970 with the youngest victim being only 7 months old. Though race and sex were not part of the clearance predictors in the findings, most of the cleared cases involved male victims as compared to those involving female victims while Hispanics led with the largest number of victims followed by Blacks then Whites.

Similar to the previous year, most of the cleared cases involved the use of a firearm as opposed to the use of a knife or contact weapon which differed with the findings with the handgun being the most used type of firearm. Only a small number of the cleared cases involved the use of a knife or contact weapon with some of the cases involving bodily force. Also, the cleared cases involved only one victim differing with the findings that found more than one victim as a clearance predictor.

Results for 2009
In 2009, a total of 114 homicides were committed with 102 homicides being cleared with an additional 16 past homicides being cleared. This represented 83 of the total committed homicides. Similar to the two previous years, most of the cleared homicides involved young victims correlating with the findings. Most of the victims in the cleared cases were males while Hispanics constituted the largest race of victims similar to the previous year. Whites and Blacks had almost an equal number of victims with Latinos registering the least number of victims in the cleared cases.

Similar to the two previous years, most of the cleared cases involved the use of a firearm as opposed to the findings that established the use of a knife or contact weapon as a predictor for clearance. The handgun still remained to be the most used type of firearm compared to others types. The number of victims also differed with the findings as the cleared cases involved only one victim whereas the findings established more than one victim as the predictor for clearance.