I think race of victim is probably not the root cause in the solve rate.

There is a high correlation between being a non-white murder victim (in America) and being targeted by or involved in gang violence.

Gang violence seems to be less moderated by the police, for probably a variety of reasons both practical and political.

But yes, if you aren’t killing a rival gang member, you do probably have worse odds than the overall stat.

- Gang-related homicides are less than 20% of all homicides in the US.

- Gang-related homicides includes the homicides of innocent bystanders of gang-related shootings.

- Over half of all homicide victims are non-white.

These three facts make it obvious that well above 60% of all non-white homicides are NOT “gang-targeted or -involved”.

If it is true that 80% [EDIT: not true (I misread stat in another comment) but gist of argument still stands] of non-white cases go unsolved, then more than 50% of all unsolved non-white homicides are NOT gang-related in any way.

And this is an extremely conservative estimate. Just fixing unfavorable rounding adjusts the percentage of unrelated unsolved homicides to above 65%.

Given that, it doesn’t seem wise to presume gang-involvement on the part of non-white unsolved homicide victims solely on the basis of them being… non-white unsolved homicide victims.

> If it is true that 80% of non-white cases go unsolved [...]

It's not nearly that bad. Around 40-50% are solved. There are around 30% more non-white homicides than there are white homicides per year in the US, which means that the overall homicide solve rate is closer to the non-white solve rate than to the white solve rate.

Thanks for catching my mistake and updating. I misread earlier comment.

Gang violence would often be random offender, random victim too. I imagine a motivated murder by a related party is significantly easier to solve than a random shooting where the perpetrator hightails it immediately.

Related parties are easy to name and find, unrelated murderers which you don't find immediately are only going to get harder to catch - where do you even start when with something like that?

A lot of gang violence is at parties and (sadly) funerals. The demographics of the injured bystanders thus tend to reflect the demographics of people who attend those events.

> A lot of gang violence is at parties and (sadly) funerals

Nice just-so argument.

Any basis in fact? Stats maybe?

And 50% is a horrible baseline for 25 years to life in jail. Even 5%, with no statute of limitations, would make me uncomfortable my whole life.

With the ubiquity of cameras, tracking, I suspect any murder can be solved if we are suitably motivated.

Any one murder can be, or almost any one. It's generalising that effort to all murders that's hard.