3 ms·
There are many more crimes than murders, and the chances of getting caught are much lower. For example: in San Francisco, the clearance rate for reported larcen
by ggreer 4y ago
There are many more crimes than murders, and the chances of getting caught are much lower. For example: in San Francisco, the clearance rate for reported larcenies is 2.9%.[1] So a thief can expect to steal another 23 times before having a 50% chance of being caught. SF's 6.4% clearance rate for vehicle theft means that a car thief can expect to steal another 10 cars before getting caught.
1. https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/clearance-rates-dashboard https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/clea...
- robocat 4y agoI presume the actual distribution is highly skewed, so “expect to steal another 10 cars” is likely better said as something like “expect to steal twice as many cars than they have already stolen” plus a clearance rate for a first time offender. Obviously difficult to get reliable information on the true distribution - but perhaps can be predicted by the outlier fat tail? More simply put: much more than 50% of people that have stolen 1 car will get caught before they have stolen their tenth car, and if someone has stolen a hundred cars then their chances of getting caught before stealing 110 are much less than 50%. Edit: note that my figures don’t match your numbers - they are only examples.