The Nether Providence Police Department has posted the month by month crime statistics for Nether Providence to their new website. Chief Splain also helpfully answered some questions I had about understanding what the tables mean. It’s great that the police department is making this data readily available to us. Part 1 offenses are the more serious ones, and part 2 are generally less severe. Offenses reported is how many crimes were reported to the police, unfound complaints are cases where police found no evidence of a crime (or no crime was committed) and actual offenses are cases where police did find evidence of a crime. The total cleared and juvenile cleared indicate cases where someone was cited, arrested, the victim withdrew the complaint, the offender died or anything else that resolved the reported offense.

There were no homicides, rapes, robberies or arsons in Nether Providence in 2021. There were no assaults with a firearm but two assaults with a weapon. The overwhelming bulk of the listed part 1 offenses are larcenies, which are dominated by people having things stolen from unlocked cars. Please remember to always lock your cars! The overall distribution of crimes can be seen in the figure. Of the 12 assaults, 5 were cleared in 2021. Neither of the two burglaries were. Six of the 71 larcenies were cleared and one of the seven motor vehicle thefts.

Of the part 2 offenses, disorderly conduct, vandalism and fraud make up the three most likely. There were 8 drug offenses, of which 2 were for marijuana and the rest for cocaine/opium. Three of the cocaine/opium offenses were for sales. There were 4 sex offenses plus one additional one marked unfounded. There were 3 DUI’s and 5 drunkenness/liquor law offenses as well. Overall 22 of the 126 offenses in part 2 were marked cleared in 2021. Sex offenses, weapons possession, drunkenness and disorderly conduct were the most likely to be marked cleared. Among the juvenile cases, one juvenile weapons possession and one juvenile liquor law offense marked cleared.

Nether Providence’s rate of case clearance appears consistent with national averages. According to the Pew Research Center,

Even when violent and property crimes are reported to police, they’re often not solved – at least based on a measure known as the clearance rate. That’s the share of cases each year that are closed, or “cleared,” through the arrest, charging and referral of a suspect for prosecution. In 2015, 46% of the violent crimes and 19% of the property crimes reported to police in the U.S. were cleared, according to FBI data.

Reporting and clearance rates for violent and property crimes have held relatively steady over the past two decades, even as overall crime rates in both categories have declined sharply. Between 1995 and 2015, the share of violent crimes reported to police each year ranged from 40% to 51%; for property crimes, the share ranged from 32% to 40%. During the same period, the share of violent crimes cleared by police ranged from 44% to 50%; for property crimes, annual clearance rates ranged from 16% to 20%.