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Data Hit

Keeping California Communities Safe Starts with Understanding Crime Rates

October 2022 | By Scott Graves

Everyone wants to live in safe communities, and data show California continues to experience crime rates well below historical peaks. The property crime rate — the number of property crimes per 100,000 residents — was 2,178 per 100,000 in 2021, far below the peak of 6,881 in 1980. The violent crime rate was 466 per 100,000 in 2021, less than half the 1992 peak of 1,104.

“Despite a rise in property and violent crime rates in 2021, data show California continues to experience crime rates well below historical peaks.”
Line Chart: Property and Violent Crime Rates in California Remain Well Below the Peaks of the Past Five Decades

Crime rates recently increased across the nation as the COVID-19 pandemic took its toll. In California, between 2020 and 2021 the property crime rate rose by 3% and the violent crime rate went up by over 6%.

Any rise in crime is concerning, even as crime rates remain at historic lows. Policymakers should avoid resurrecting the failed, incarceration-focused policies of the past. Instead, state leaders must advance strategies to reduce youth violence, strengthen families and communities, and target the longstanding structural barriers to opportunity — such as poverty and housing instability — that disproportionately impact Black, Latinx, and other Californians of color.

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Introduction

California adopted a series of justice system reforms in the 2010s that substantially reduced mass incarceration. Did these reforms also help to reduce long standing racial disparities in state prisons — disparities that reflect the disproportionate incarceration of Black and Latinx residents as well as other Californians of color? This report answers this question by examining changes in state-level incarceration during the 2010s for both men and women through the lens of race and ethnicity. While incarceration declined nearly across the board, by the end of the 2010s men and women of color generally continued to be incarcerated at higher rates than white men and women, and racial disparities generally widened.

Ending racial disparities in incarceration will require sustained efforts — including action from policymakers at all levels of government — to advance antiracist policies that can address the legacy of past discrimination as well as ongoing racism that continues to harm Californians of color, both within and outside of the justice system.

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Across California and the United States, the push for bail reform has gained momentum with increasing awareness and research showing the disproportionate impact the money bail system has on people of color and low-income households. In California, it’s estimated over two-thirds of people detained in jails – around 47,000 – have not been sentenced for a crime, a number that includes both those who cannot afford bail and those who are awaiting sentencing post-conviction. Los Angeles County alone is the largest jail system in the US and houses over 1 in 5 of adults who have not been sentenced for an alleged crime in California.

Enter Proposition 25 that will appear on the November 3, 2020 statewide ballot and asks California voters to decide whether a 2018 state law that effectively ends money bail should take effect. If voters approve Prop. 25, judges will be able to utilize risk-based assessment tools – examining population links between rearrest or reconviction and individual factors such as age, gender, or criminal record – to determine if individuals detained for certain crimes can be released before a court appearance rather than posting money bail.

Read the full report that discusses racial, economic, and gender disparities embedded in the money bail system and why efforts to reform California’s bail system also aim to address the wide racial disparities seen in the criminal justice system.

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