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GlossaryReports, outcomes, and case status

Clearance

Clearance is a crime-reporting outcome based on arrest or exceptional criteria. It differs from administrative case closure and conviction.

In the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting program, a clearance records that an offense or incident has met the program's arrest or exceptional-clearance criteria. It is a crime-reporting outcome, not a conviction. An agency's decision to close an investigation administratively does not necessarily qualify as a clearance.

The two routes to clearance

Clearance by arrest generally involves a person being arrested, charged with the offense, and referred for prosecution under the reporting rules. Exceptional clearance applies when the agency has met specified investigative conditions but a qualifying circumstance outside its control prevents the usual arrest-and-prosecution process.

The FBI's archived 2018 clearance explanation describes these two routes and distinguishes them from administrative closure. Recovering stolen property alone, for example, does not clear the offense. FBI clearance explanation.

“Cleared” can therefore be narrower than “closed” but broader than “convicted.” A case can stop receiving active investigation without satisfying clearance criteria. Conversely, a qualifying clearance can be recorded before a court reaches a final outcome.

Incident records and offense statistics

The counting level matters. In the FBI's NIBRS User Manual version 2025.0, agencies clear incidents rather than separately clearing each offense within them; the first associated arrestee segment clears the incident. A qualifying exceptional clearance likewise applies to the incident. That is a system rule, not a count of people found guilty. FBI manual, section 3.4 and Data Element 4.

Published clearance statistics may be expressed as offenses cleared. One incident can include multiple offenses, and one arrest can relate to more than one incident. A count of clearance records, a count of cleared offenses, and a count of arrested people are therefore different measures.

Example

Hypothetical example: An agency reports 80 qualifying offenses during a calendar year and records 20 qualifying offense clearances during that year. Under a method dividing annual clearances by annual reported offenses, the clearance rate is 20 ÷ 80 × 100, or 25 percent.

Suppose five of those clearances concern offenses reported the previous year. The 25 percent does not mean that exactly one quarter of the 80 newly reported offenses were cleared. It compares activity recorded during the same period, not necessarily outcomes for the same set of cases.

The example counts offenses, not people, and assumes matching offense categories and agency coverage. Changing either part of that definition would change what the percentage means.

Common confusion

Clearance is not conviction. It records a qualifying law-enforcement reporting outcome. Court disposition and conviction are separate stages.

Clearance is not every case closure. A case may be administratively closed because available leads are exhausted. Without the required conditions, that does not create a UCR clearance.

Clearance does not count every offender. Reporting rules can clear an incident even when additional offenders remain to be identified or arrested. The measure does not certify that every part of an investigation is finished.

Reading a published clearance figure

Identify whether the release reports arrest clearances, exceptional clearances, or both. Also identify the offense categories, year, agency coverage, and whether the method follows a fixed group of incidents or compares annual totals.

The 2025.0 manual cited here is dated June 23, 2025; it supplies the specific NIBRS mechanics described above. Historical summary tables use their own release documentation. Preserve that source context instead of treating all uses of “cleared” as one universal administrative status.

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