Clearance rate

Clearance rate is the share of reported crimes that a law enforcement agency resolves, typically through an arrest, though some definitions also count cases closed by "exceptional means," such as when a suspect is known but cannot be charged. It is calculated as crimes cleared / crimes reported, over the same period and jurisdiction, and is reported separately for different offense types, since violent and property crime clear at very different rates.

Because the numerator and denominator can fall in different reporting periods, a crime reported in one month might be cleared in a later one, agencies use standardized rules, commonly the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting guidelines in the United States, to keep the count consistent; other countries and agencies define clearance differently, which limits cross-jurisdiction comparison. This differs from the crime rate, which counts reported incidents relative to population and says nothing about resolution.

Clearance rate is used as a rough proxy for police effectiveness and investigative capacity, and low clearance rates for a given offense type are one input agencies cite when requesting resources. Its main pitfall is that it can be distorted by reclassifying or under-recording crimes, and it correlates strongly with offense type and victim-offender relationship rather than purely with investigative quality, which limits its use as a stand-alone performance measure.