This study maps the determinants that actually shape the clearance of aggravated theft cases and establishes their legal position and its consequences for the validity of imposing performance assessment upon the police. It is empirical legal research reinforced by normative analysis through statutory, conceptual, and case approaches, taking the jurisdiction of Kepolisian Sektor Seberang Ulu I in Palembang from 2023 to 2025 as its locus, which recorded 303 reports and an aggregate clearance figure of 31.02 percent. Environmental observation notes and a matched pair of case illustrations serve as primary evidence, while statements from five informants serve as corroboration only, four of them being police officers. The discussion yields a determinant map that is mixed yet asymmetric: case processing, response speed, and the quality of scene sterilization lie within investigator control, whereas the supply of environmental evidentiary traces, namely lighting, cameras, and witnesses, lies outside it. Three competing characterizations are tested: internal police constraints explain processing but not evidence supply, the primacy of self-organized security proves conditioned by spatial visibility, and socio-economic factors explain crime occurrence but not case clearance. The obligation over the conditions supplying evidentiary traces attaches to Pemerintah Daerah as a mandatory governmental affair relating to basic services, is measurable through technical road standards and fiscal monitoring, not minimum service standards, and carries earmarked financing with a route of consequence, its level of fulfilment at the locus being left unassessed. The novelty lies in shifting the unit of performance analysis from a single organ to the linkage between organs through the boundary of authority. It concludes that the validity of clearance figures as a performance indicator diminishes insofar as their determinants lie beyond the control of the assessed organ, and proposes separating effort from effect as das Sollen and de lege ferenda without reducing police procedural obligations.
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