ABSTRACT
Rising crime rates, declining clearance rates, staff shortages, and budget restrictions in the last decades of the twentieth century taxed American law enforcement. This was felt across a wide spectrum of the public safety arena, including within homicide investigation and the medical examiner/coroner arena. More crime and fewer resources were coupled with organizational issues within these departments, including retirements, transfers, and other personnel changes. Younger, less experienced detectives were thrust into positions for which their predecessors had heretofore been groomed and prepared for—investigation of criminal homicide. With the decline in murder rates, agencies began to explore various options to revisit unsolved homicides. One of these methods was the cold case squad.
