Misleading CA Crime Data

An ABC Los Angeles story on crime in Southern California and a report by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) have found that overall crime is down in the Golden State, although there were some minor increases in some violent crimes, particularly, as ABC notes, among the homeless in Los Angeles.

According to the LAPD crimes against homeless people increased by 24% last year, with a 19% increase in serious violent crimes and 5% increase in homicides where the homeless were victims.  The PPIC report noted that the state’s prison and parole populations are decreasing, that the local jail population has also decreased, but that rearrest and reconviction rates, and the cost for state prisons remain the highest in the nation.

The state corrections budget has increased every year since Realignment (AB109) was enacted in 2011, although proponents promised that the state would save millions in corrections costs by releasing inmates to the counties and barring new prison sentences for property and drug felonies and some assaults.  The same promises were made by proponents of Proposition 47 and Proposition 57, which allowed the early release of thousands of criminals and reduced sentences for most new crimes.  The ABC story and the PPIC report note that overall crime in Southern California and the state as a whole has gone down.  So is this good news true?   Mostly no.

Parole and the prison populations are down because California’s compassionate reforms have sharply reduced the crimes that are eligible for prison and eliminated parole supervision for most released inmates.  County jail populations are down because these same reforms have reduced thousands of the property and drug crimes committed each year to misdemeanors and required diversion to rehab programs rather than jail time for most offenders.   ABC sort of gave away the goose when it noted that,  “One part of the equation that makes crimes against homeless people difficult to measure is simply having the victim report the crime. In many cases, the homeless victim refuses to report the crime at all. With no report, statistically, the crime never happened.”  The same is true of property and drug crimes converted to misdemeanors by Proposition 47.   Most Californians are not reporting thefts valued at under $950 because police do not respond in most cases and there are no consequences for the offender even if police do catch them.  Drug deals are now routinely made in broad daylight on crowded downtown streets with impunity and fatal drug overdoses have reached record highs.  The worst that happens if a thief, dealer, or raging addict is arrested, is that he receives a citation and is released.

Crime is up all across California, including in affluent neighborhoods and even gated communities.  But thousands of crimes are no longer being reported or punished, so on paper they never happened.