Joel Jacobsen

I've always thought of the criminal law as a reflection of society's attitude toward the weak.  And even if you weren't weak before you were attacked, there's nothing quite like a bullet to weaken you.  At least in the Western states, with the "no duty to retreat" ethos, our courts are gung-ho about encouraging people to take care of it themselves.  (And not just the courts, either.)

That tolerance for DIY revenge sometimes leads to a judicial attitude of lightly-disguised contempt for those who don't partake.  If you're not going to protect yourself, why should we protect you?  Judges are protective of people they identify with, and who wants to identify with a woman who returns to the man who broke her cheekbone?

But the ultimate disposable people don't even make it far enough to have their ID photo introduced as a prosecution exhibit.  Last fall the Bureau of Justice Statistics published a fact sheet on Unidentified Human Remains in the United States, 1980-2004.  The fact sheet reported that 10,328 unidentified remains were reported to the National Death Index (now there's a memorable response to the cocktail party question, What do you do?).

But the 10,328 figure means only that that many unidentified remains were reported to the NDI during the 25-year period under study.  Three-quarters of the reported cases came from from just 5 states, which tells you the total is an undercount. 

DOJ's National Institute of Justice reports that "[m]ore than 40,000 sets of human remains that cannot be identified through conventional means are held in the evidence rooms of medical examiners throughout the country".

But even the census of evidence rooms is an undercount, according to the DOJ report, because "many cities and counties continue to bury unidentified remains without attempting to collect DNA samples."

As of February, 2005, the NCIC - the FBI's national criminal database - contained information on just 5,900 unidentified remains, according to the BJS.  (Incidentally, if you use the Google toolbar at work, make sure you're not in Google images when you search for BJS.)  The number had barely risen as of 2007, according to one of those other acronyms mentioned earlier (I'm getting tired of writing in federalese).

Of the relatively handful of cases entered into the NCIC, 27% were classified as homicides, but in almost exactly half the cause of death couldn't be determined.  I think it's reasonable to suppose that most of the "unidentified" category are in the category because of what the passage of time does to mortal remains, and the passage of time in turn suggests concealment, and concealment suggests ...

It's not that hard to think of ways in which an accident victim's body might also be concealed (avalanche, wandering in hypothermic disorientation, seeking help for your flat tire at an isolated dilapidated farmhouse despite the warning provided by the creepy background music), but there's a report filed for most of those, I would think.  While the remains, when eventually found, might be in what the papers usually call an advanced state of decay, they'd still be identified.

I think, in short, that far more than 27% of the 40,000+ unidentified remains represent murders people have gotten away with.  And there must be another large number of remains that haven't yet been found. 

People got away with murdering these particular victims because they were so disposable.  It's hard to think of a more definitive marker of low social status.  Really, if you have so little self-respect that you allow your body to rot in a shallow grave for years and years, why should we care?