This systematic review examined the evidence on factors influencing the flow of
homicide, from suspicious death to imprisonment. Bibliographic databases and thesis
portals were searched. The total number of hits was 15,986, of which 15,830 were
irrelevant, 35 did not include a quantitative sample, 26 did not focus on homicide, 18
did not present flow data, and for seven there was no full text available. The remaining
70 papers were analyzed. With the exception of one, no study presented a complete
longitudinal flow. Results indicated that both legal and extralegal characteristics
influence the likelihood of cases to drop out. Aside from a first mapping of homicide
case flows, future research should explore false positives and false negatives, to come
to a first understanding of funnel selectivity in homicide cases.