Most Murder Cases Aren't That Interesting

Sherlock Holmes would have no interest whatever in most of the 22,076 murders reported in the United States in 1994. [That's double today's murder rate.] Only 20 cases involved poison or explosives. Only 22 were by narcotics overdose. Some 78 murders were classified as involving rape. Just 15 involved prostitution and commercialized vice. Sniper attacks make good television, but only two such homicides occurred in the United States in 1994. About 1.7 percent of the murders involved romantic triangles. Although 1,157 of the murders were classified as juvenile gang killings…the police often overdo their coding of gang involvement. Thus, if a store owner gets shot in a robbery and the offender seemed to be a gang member, many police departments count that incident as a gang murder rather than something more plain. Gang members may be highly criminal, but that does not mean that most of the crimes they commit are of, by, or for the gang itself. Members do most crime for themselves.

Marcus Felson, Crime & Everyday Life, Second Edition, 1998