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Abstract
As an important police activity, criminal investigation heavily relies on recovery, analysis and interpretation of information. Since information technologies facilitate creation, storage, retrieval, process and dissemination of information, police departments have extensively employed them in investigative activities. However, information technologies' impact on the outcome of criminal investigations is still unclear. This study examines whether use of information technologies makes an impact on the outcome of criminal investigations. The analysis results revealed that there is not a consistent relationship between police departments' use of information technologies and their clearance rates. In addition to this finding, this study made an important methodological contribution to the literature by showing that unbalanced data may be an important source of concern for observational studies of police departments, and it should be carefully investigated before conducting any inferential analysis.