Although there's an interlocking effect here. A lot of murders in 1960 were probably 'cleared' by accusing the wrong man, and in the state of forensics at the time it was harder to prove them wrong. Think about the absurd number of death penalty convictions that were overturned by the invention of DNA testing; there is no reason to assume that those homicide convictions were any more likely to turn out wrong than any other.Adamskywalker007 wrote:A similar issue is that of police tactics that cause false confessions. As the overwhelming majority of people have never had contact with police in a negative capacity, it is easy for them to say that they would never confess to something they didn't do. However there is nothing that requires police tell the truth in any capacity in dealing with suspects and it is quite easy for them to convince people to tell what they know until they spill something that incriminates them, regardless of their actual guilt. Most detectives have a relatively easy time convincing someone to ignore the Miranda rights they just signed.Simon_Jester wrote:I think part of the problem is that in America, we now have all these accoutrements of police state tactics (secret prisons, secret trials on secret evidence, highly classified state intelligence/security organs, torture...). But we don't have any experience of those tools being used against "us," the we-the-people that constitutes the American mainstream. They only get used on 'weird bad people.'
An interesting fact, the homicide clearance rate in the US has dropped from 90% in 1960 to 61% in 2009. This is despite modern forensics being much more effective. The key reason is due to less public cooperation which the issue of torture doesn't exactly help with, though generally the problem is gangs and the corresponding lack of trust in both directions.
At the same time, yes public trust probably pays a major role, especially because a lot of the crime occurs in highly concentrated poor areas, rather than being a routine random occurrence in the places where society has a less-bad relationship with the police.
