Of all public security statistics, unsolved violent crime is probably probably the most harrowing.
Over the previous three years, Washington skilled 405 unsolved homicides, 6,955 unsolved rapes, 13,412 unsolved robberies and 29,708 unsolved aggravated assaults.
Because the Nineteen Sixties, remedy charges of all classes of main crime have slowly and steadily declined. In 2024, the general remedy fee of violent incidents in Washington was 44%.
“How low can this fee go earlier than all the felony justice system is rendered ineffective?” requested Marshall Clement, director of the Council of State Governments Justice Heart, a New York-based assume tank, throughout a Washington legislative work session earlier this month.
“Nothing else in our felony justice system can occur — rehabilitation, deterrence, incapacitation — except we have now a system that truly solves the vast majority of violent crime that’s occurring.”
It’s not a hopeless state of affairs. There are success tales across the nation of departments turning issues round. However it can take a coordinated focus by legislators.
The remedy fee will not be distributed evenly throughout Washington. Auburn Police Division had a 21% remedy fee for violent crime in 2024. In Kent, it was 22%. Seattle police had a 32% remedy fee of violent crime, the identical as Tacoma. The Pierce County sheriff’s workplace had a remedy fee of 53%.
“In case you, as a witness, understand that crimes will not be being solved in your group, you might be much less more likely to cooperate, which then creates a downward cycle,” Clement instructed lawmakers. “Much less cooperation means much less crime solved. This implies much less cooperation, which implies extra impunity and sense of with the ability to get away with violence.”
“This is likely one of the most ignored elements of our felony justice system and the place the most important problem is confronted,” Clement added. “This isn’t one thing native regulation enforcement can do alone. This isn’t one thing that state police or prosecutors can do alone. That is going to require management from you (state legislators) to essentially make this a precedence and to focus assets on enhancing these outcomes.”
To make certain, there may be excellent news about public security.
Violent crime decreased 6.4% in 2024 from 2023. Property crime decreased 13.3%. Though police hiring is up — the per capita fee for regulation enforcement officers elevated from 1.35 to 1.38 per thousand residents statewide from 2023 to 2024 — it nonetheless lags the nationwide fee of two.32.
Detectives leaving investigatory items to work as patrol officers are a part of the issue.
Final 12 months, lawmakers authorized a program, championed by Gov. Bob Ferguson, that supplied $100 million to assist departments rent new officers. Rep. Roger Goodman, D-Kirkland, chair of the state Home Group Security Committee, mentioned he wished to ensure the brand new assets are dedicated to the issue of unsolved crimes.
“We simply handed a sequence of main grant packages — $100 million — and maybe we might direct extra of these assets towards investigations. I’m going to be making noise about that,” Goodman mentioned in the course of the work session.
That could be a constructive signal.
Criminologists say it’s the chance of getting caught that almost all impacts people’ selections. Washington should flip round a long time of historical past and make better strides in fixing violent crimes to vary the calculus of getting away with it and scale back the variety of victims who by no means obtain justice.
