30 OCTOBER 2019 THE ATLANTICT
HE HELTER-
SKELTER 1970 s
and ’ 80 s are
remembered as the serial
killer’s heyday—think of
Ted Bundy, John Wayne
Gacy, and David “Son of
Sam” Berkowitz. Since
then, data suggest, the
number of serial killers—
defined by the National
Institute of Justice as
those who commit two or
more separate murders,
often with a psychologi-
cal motive and a sadistic
sexual component—has
plunged, falling 85 per-
cent in three decades;
the FBI now says that
serial killers account for
fewer than 1 percent of
killings. Several reasons
are commonly cited for
this decline, among themlonger prison sentences
and a reduction in parole
(many serial killers are
convicted murderers
who, after serving time,
kill again). Better forensic
science is also cred-
ited, as are cultural and
technological shifts: less
hitchhiking, more heli-
copter parents, 6 0 million
security cameras.
But here’s a curious
fact. As the number of
serial killings has suppos-
edly fallen, so too has
the rate of murder cases
solved—or “cleared,” in
detective lingo. In 19 65,
the U.S. homicide clear-
ance rate was 91 percent.
By 201 7, it had dropped
to 6 1 .6 percent, one of
the lowest rates in the
Western world. In otherwords, about 4 0 percent
of the time, murderers get
away with murder.
Some experts
believe that serial killers
are responsible for a
significant number of
these unsolved murders.
Thomas Hargrove, the
founder of the Murder
Accountability Project, a
nonprofit that compiles
data on homicide, has
examined how many
unsolved murders are
linked by DNA evidence.
He believes that at least
2 percent of murders
are committed by serial
offenders—translating to
about 2 , 100 un identified
serial killers. Michael
Arntfield, a retired police
detective and the author
of 12 books on serial
murder, agrees that the
FBI’s projections are off
(he blames patchy data,
among other things) but
thinks the number of
active serial killers is more
like 3, 000 or 4, 000.
If such estimates are
right, why aren’t more
killers getting caught?
Take Samuel Little. He
isn’t a household name,
yet the California inmate’s
confessed death toll,
across 1 4 states and four
decades, appears to be
triple Bundy’s. Since 2012 ,- CRIMINAL TENDENCIES
Are Serial Killers More
Common Than We Think?
The factors in modern life that have made
it easier to kill, without consequence,
again and againBY RENE CHUNDISPATCHESera had devastating effects, and that Har-
ris wrongly defended some of them. But
her anti-truancy initiative—which she
launched after studying data on the corre-
lation between truancy during childhood
and crime later on—was designed to keep
people out of jail. And the effort appears
to have kept kids in school: Between the
2007–08 and 2010–11 school years, the
percentage of students in San Francisco
public schools deemed chronically truant
fell from 4 to 2.5 percent.
Progressive critics might argue that
Harris could have achieved those results
without threatening parents with fines or
jail. But she didn’t lock up any parents of
truants; very few even paid a fine. In most
instances, judges dismissed cases on the
condition that the parents took actions to
get their kid to school. Why did it take a
court summons to get some families the
help they needed? It’s called the “black-
robe effect.” For some people, a judge’s
demand carries more weight than a school
administrator’s plea, even when they’re
urging the same thing. In the hardest
cases, giving people an opportunity to get
help isn’t enough— demanding that they
exercise responsibility is necessary too.
Nonetheless, Harris has back pedaled.
Although she declared in her 2009
book, Smart on Crime, that “fighting tru-
ancy might very well be the single most
important thing we can do to impact the
future of crime,” the issue is absent from
the criminal- justice section of her cam-
paign website. This spring, she said she
regrets the way other California prosecu-
tors implemented a 2011 statewide anti-
truancy law that she’d pushed. In the
current ideological climate, Democrats
won’t even defend Clintonian policies
that they know have worked.
Something similar has happened to
Cory Booker on education. Booker, like
Bill Clinton, once advocated for charter
schools, which operate without many of
the regulations that govern traditional
public schools. After becoming mayor of
Newark, New Jersey, Booker, according
to The New Yorker, set out to make the city
“the charter school capital of the nation.”
Aided by an infusion of money from Face-
book CEO Mark Zucker berg and others,
he made progress toward achieving that
goal. From the 2009–10 to 2017–18 school
years, the share of Newark students
attending charter schools rose from 12 to
33 percent.
The data have been impressive. While
achievement growth in math ended up
flat, English gains in Newark schools
have significantly improved since Booker
launched his reforms, according to a
study by the Center for Education Policy
Research at Harvard. (Although funded
by what is now the Chan Zuckerberg Ini-
tiative, the study—conducted by research-
ers at Harvard and Dartmouth—was
peer-reviewed.) The study found that the
movement of students from traditional
public schools to higher- quality charters
helped drive this progress. According to
data from the Newark Board of Education,graduation rates have improved too. That
finding is consistent with a 2015 study by
the Center for Research on Education
Outcomes at Stanford showing that stu-
dents in urban charter schools perform
substantially better than students in other
urban public schools.
Nonetheless, as Bernie Sanders’s
socialist message has gained influence,
the mood inside the Democratic Party has
turned against charter schools. Sanders
has proposed a halt to government fund-
ing of new charter schools. Even a rela-
tive moderate, Pete Buttigieg, has called
for slowing their expansion, according to