The more things change, the more they stay the same.
I’ve been watching old episodes of Columbo recently. For those, unfamiliar, Columbo was a 1970s bumbling genius of a detective, who routinely, outthought and or tricked murderers to solve seemingly “perfect” crimes.
Routinely, their undoing was as much exasperation with the relentless nitpicking of the detective, as it was evidence.
One of the things I love about watching old shows is the technology. One case centered around the use of an answering machine. As an aside, it often astounds me how far back technologies go. The answering machine, believe it or not, was invented in 1898. Of course they did not really become common as a consumer product until the 1980s and in Columbo’s early days, it was one of those great novelties he so painstakingly endeavoured to understand in order to catch his killer.
Of course, the early Columbo episodes predate cell phones and even pagers, so the detective was forever leaving the phone numbers of his suspects with the police department so they could get hold of him in the field.
In another episode, Columbo traps his man because a phone call to dispatch could not have been made at the time of the murder, as set up by the murderer, because there was no pay phone within range of the crime scene for the caller to have used to tip off the cops.
All of this is a long-winded way of getting to the point that most crime-solving, even today, is very low-tech.
A person could, of course, be forgiven for thinking it is all UV lamps, oscilloscopes, DNA recovery, chemical baths and vacuum hoods, or whatever it is the specialists are forever tinkering with on CSI.
Honestly, most of this stuff rarely comes in to play. The vast majority of crimes are solved the old-fashioned way.
In the first place, there is a good reason why “all the usual suspects” is such a recognizable phrase.
A cursory review of the court docket on any given day reveals familiar names. A lot of the time, they are caught in the act or there are witnesses or they confess. They almost always confess or plead guilty.
That is not to say police do not have to be diligent, even when it is obvious whodunit. They need to document everything, take the statements, nail down the timeline, follow up on leads, collect everything that might be evidence and persevere in the face of dead ends. If a case ever gets to trial—most don’t—it has to be pretty strong because the defence only has to raise reasonable doubt.
Statistically, about 63 per cent of court cases in Canada result in guilty verdict, one way or another.
Of course, we are talking about solved or “cleared” cases, as they are referred to by StatsCan.
The weighted clearance rate for crimes in Canada is approximately 40 per cent. Since 1998, the statistical agency has used weighted clearance rate just as it has shifted to reporting crime severity as opposed to crime rate. That is because just about everybody agrees it is more important to solve a murder than a mischief (except for the person who just had a giant scratch etched into their BMW).
Actual clearance rates range drastically from 79 per cent (assault) to 14 per cent (motor vehicle theft).
Another misconception that comes out of TV drama is that crime always gets solved. Obviously, that’s not true. In fact, the Mounties only get their man, as the old saying goes, about 72 per cent of the time for violent crimes and 30 per cent for non-violent crimes.
When they do, it’s usually not because of some fancy high tech gadget.
