I prosecuted cases in the military and I've spent two decades in Minnesota courtrooms, so I've listened to the crime debate from the inside for a long time. And here's my conclusion: both sides are arguing about the wrong thing. One side says the system is too harsh. The other says it's too soft. They're both arguing about what happens to people who get caught. Almost nobody is talking about the fact that most people never get caught at all.
The number nobody campaigns on
It's called the clearance rate — the share of reported crimes that end with someone identified and charged — and it is the most damning statistic in American criminal justice. Nationally, roughly half of murders go unsolved. For burglary, motor-vehicle theft, and most property crime, the clearance rate is in the teens or lower. A car stolen in Minnesota is, statistically, a crime with no consequence; the overwhelming majority are never solved. Sexual assault clearance is dismal. If you are the victim of a typical crime in this state, the most likely outcome is that no one is ever held accountable.
Think about what that means for the two sides' arguments. If a crime has, say, a 15 percent chance of ever being solved, then arguing about whether the sentence should be five years or seven is arguing about the tail of the dog. The certainty of consequence, not the severity, is what deters — that's not my opinion, it's one of the most consistent findings in criminology going back decades. A system that solves few crimes is neither soft nor harsh. It's just absent. And absence is impunity.
Why this is the honest common ground
Here's what I like about clearance rates as the measure: they're what everyone actually wants, once you strip away the slogans. The "tough on crime" voter wants criminals caught. The "reform" voter wants a system that's fair and focused and doesn't sweep up the wrong people. Solving more crimes serves both. A detective who actually closes the burglary is more valuable to a victim than any sentencing statute, and a system that identifies the right person is the opposite of one that rounds up the usual suspects.
It also reorients the argument about police. "Defund" versus "more cops" is the wrong axis. The question is: what are we buying? A patrol car driving past does not solve a crime. Investigation does — detectives with manageable caseloads, forensic labs that don't take months to process evidence, victim advocates who keep witnesses engaged, and the unglamorous data work that connects one case to another. Those are the parts of policing that are chronically starved, because they don't produce a press conference.
Measure what matters
Right now we measure police by arrests and by response time. Both are inputs. Measure them by cases solved — clearance rates, by crime type, by department, published where the public can see them. Measure prosecutors the same way: not by conviction rate on the cases they choose to bring, but by the share of reported serious crimes that actually reach a resolution. What gets measured gets funded. If clearance rates were on the front page, the forensic-lab backlog would be gone in a year.
The honest concession
To the reform side: yes, more investigative capacity means more people caught, and some of that will land on communities already over-policed — which is exactly why the measure has to be cases solved correctly, with the wrongful-conviction safeguards this series has written about elsewhere. To the tough-on-crime side: solving more crimes doesn't require longer sentences, and I'm not offering them; certainty, not severity, is the lever. And to everyone: clearance data is only as honest as the reporting behind it, so publishing it has to come with rules against gaming.
What I'd actually do
Fund investigation, not just patrol — detectives, forensic labs, and victim services, with the backlog cleared as the first priority.
Publish clearance rates by crime type and department, and make them the headline metric for police and prosecutors.
Target the worst gaps — vehicle theft, burglary, and sexual assault, where consequence is closest to zero.
The system isn't too soft or too harsh. It's too slow and it solves too little. A crime with no consequence isn't justice reform and it isn't toughness — it's impunity. Fix that, and most of the rest of the debate gets a lot smaller.
First the facts. Then the fix.
Sources
This is a policy position. National clearance-rate figures are drawn from the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting / NIBRS "Crime in the United States" data (clearance by arrest or exceptional means, by offense type); Minnesota-specific figures are reported by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension's annual Uniform Crime Report. The criminological finding that certainty of apprehension deters more than severity of punishment is summarized in the National Institute of Justice's "Five Things About Deterrence" (2016) and the underlying literature (e.g., Nagin, 2013). Cross-reference to this series' articles on public defense and wrongful-conviction safeguards.
Specific Minnesota clearance percentages by offense were not pulled to a primary line this pass (the BCA's site blocks automated retrieval) and are described in general terms; confirm current BCA figures before citing exact numbers. Corrections: campaign@madgettformn.com.