A Brief History
On August 31, 2006, the Norwegian police announced the recovery of Edvard Munch’s famous painting, The Scream, which had been stolen in 2004. A reward equal to around $313,000 US probably helped them catch the thieves, but many other crimes go unsolved. How many crimes? Read the list below to get a sobering idea about how many crimes in the US go unsolved. (Note: Data varies with source.)
Digging Deeper
Murder- 50%
Rape- 30%
Robbery- 27%
Burglary- 14%
Car theft- 12%
Arson- 21%
Do any of these meager solving percentages surprise you? Which one surprises you the most?
Question for students (and subscribers): Before checking out this article, what percentage of murders did you think were solved? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Brandl, Steven. Police in America. SAGE Publications, 2020.
Worrall, John. Crime Control in America: What Works? Pearson, 2018.
The featured image in this article, a photograph by Tu of The Scream back in the National Gallery after recovery and before restoration, September 2006, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
You can also watch video versions of this article on YouTube.
