Carlene said:
Interesting topic.
I heard a real CSI speak a couple of months ago here in San Diego. Someone in the crowd asked if there was such a thing as the perfect crime and he laughed. He said it happens all the time - only about half the homicides are ever solved. The criminals they catch are stoooopid.
Also, there's a book out titled, "The Good, the Bad and the Innocent," written by a forensic phycologist and she said, that some people kill not because they're nuts, but because they are evil - they are born that way and because...they like it. Scary.
Carlene
He must have been from Washington D.C., which is just about the only place in the country with such a low homicide clearance rate. There are no perfect crimes, but there is also no perfect police work. But it's simply not true that only half the homicides are ever solved. Throughout most of the country, homicide is the most solved of all crimes, and 70% of black murders, and 80% of white murders are solved within days. Most are solved right on the spot.
Unsolved homicides are most often committed by stupid criminals, not smart ones. They aren't planned as much as they're simply done. Drive by shootings, etc.
This makes the clearance rate unnaturally low in some big cities. But you can't call these perfect crimes, and you can't say the police only catch the stupid criminals. Unless you have a really stupid police department.
Just because the police fail to find the murderer does not mean it was aperfect crime. It usually just means it was either a random killing, or the police themselves were imperfect.
I'm awfully glad that CSI doesn't work here. The criminals our guys catch are frequently very smart. But they don't assume there is such a thiong as a perfect crime. There are only cases they have solved, and those they will solve sooner or later.
It would scare me to death to hear someone responsible for solving crimes say that any crime they can't solve is a perfect crime. Talk about a self-defeating attitude guaranteed to lower the clearance rate.