Introduction

The objectives of solvability research are to enable the cost-effective investigation of crimes and to improve the number of detected cases. ‘Triaging’ of cases may be used to facilitate the alignment of resources with incident solvability at each step of the investigation process. Solvability efforts take place against a backdrop of increasing demands, with antisocial behaviour, fraud and cyber offences that are ‘new’ in police investigations. Many offences are perpetrated by offenders and networks from foreign jurisdictions, a few of which are investigated or solved. Resource reductions and the refocusing of police effort into non-crime events involving those at risk of harm, such as missing persons, are also implicated. Detecting crime has an enduring importance through deterring offending, enabling justice to be dispensed and helping maintain confidence in the police. Arrest is a prerequisite for rehabilitative interventions for offenders in the community or while in prison, and for the protection of the public from prolific and serious violent and sexual offenders, whose commission of crimes is largely curtailed while incarcerated. By these means, crime detection helps cement ‘normative compliance’. The volume’s contents cover existing research into the effects of crime solvability and resources on investigating and detecting crime; the solvability of high-volume property crimes, including cyber-offending; the solvability and detection of violent and sexual and hate offences; how offence solvability may be improved; the effects of resources on detection; and a theoretical resourcing-solvability model of crime detection, through which the principal concepts presented in the volume are synthesised.