CA Violent Crime Increases as Arrests Decline

Fresh FBI data for 2022 indicate that nationally the rate of violent crime dropped slightly.  In California violent crime increased by 5.7% with   aggravated assault accounting for 67%.  Property crime nationally increased by 7.1% while California’s increase was 5.9%.  Matt Delaney of The Washington Times reports that motor vehicle theft continued to increase both nationally and in California, where thefts have increased by 31.6% since 2019.  A report by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) found that the California counties with the sharpest increases in violent crimes were the bay area counties of Contra Costa, San Mateo and San Francisco.  Sacramento, Riverside, Alameda and Orange counties also saw significant increases.  Major property crime increases were seen in Fresno, Alameda, Santa Clara, Orange and San Bernardino Counties.  One positive note, homicides were down by 6.1% after significant increases in 2020 and 2021.

With the increased levels of both violent and property crime in California one would logically conclude that police departments would be arresting more suspects.  Unfortunately this is not the case.  In the California Political Review, Stephen Frank reports that between 2019 and 2022 there have been 288,000 fewer arrests, a drop of 27% statewide.  The drop was 28% in Los Angeles and 29% in San Francisco.  This has occurred during a three-year period of unprecedented increases in violent crime and most property crimes.

While the policies of District Attorneys and Mayors can influence arrest rates, the statewide decline suggests that systemic changes are responsible for this dramatic decline.  It is beyond dispute that state laws have been changed to reduce penalties and discourage arrests.  This began in 2000, when 60% of California voters adopted Proposition 36, the “Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act.”  That law required that persons convicted of using or transporting illegal drugs be put on probation and diverted to rehabilitation programs.  It did not matter how many times a person was convicted, and it did not matter if the offender failed to attend or complete the programs.  Three years after Proposition 36 took effect, a 2005 report by the anti-incarceration Justice Policy Institute noted that state prisons had shed 34% of convicted drug offenders. The same report found that 41% of diverted drug users completed their programs or made satisfactory progress.  There is no information on whether this completion rate was reported by program operators or independent review, or what constituted “satisfactory progress.”  What is known is that at least 59% of drug offenders did not complete the programs.

By the time that AB109, the Public Safety Realignment law was signed by Governor Jerry Brown in 2011, California drug users had not been going to jail or state prison for ten years.  Realignment prohibited sending thieves, including car thieves and commercial burglars and those convicted of assault, domestic violence and strong armed robbery to state prison, no matter how many times an offender committed these crimes.  They could only be sentenced to county jail with a requirement to be diverted to a rehabilitation program.  While the bill promised to sharply reduce the state’s prison expenditures and provide adequate funding to counties to pay for this, neither promise was kept.  State prison outlays have increased every year since Realignment passed although the system has roughly 25,000 fewer inmates and counties have only received a fraction of what they are spending to maintain their overcrowded jails and required programs.

In 2016,  when progressive billionaire George Soros and the ACLU pooled $10 million to fool California voters into adopting Proposition 47, the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act, the state’s homeless problem was already critical, with 115,000 drug addicted, mentally ill, vagrants living on the streets.  The initiative turned small-time drug dealing and thefts of $950 or less from felonies to misdemeanors—a cite and release offense.  With county jails filled with commercial burglars, major drug traffickers, car thieves and wife beaters there was no room for anybody else.  In the state’s most populous counties, police are unable to investigate the crimes that Proposition 47 decriminalized, and many if not most are not even reported.  This explains why earlier reports from the PPIC could claim that overall crime in California was down—fewer crimes reported, fewer criminals arrested, conclusion:  Crime is down.  Since Proposition 47 passed the homeless population has increased every year.  Today California’s homeless population exceeds 171,000, fatal drug overdoses have eclipsed those of the 1960s and both violent and property crime are steadily rising.

Governors Brown and Newsom, and the progressives packing the state legislature have gotten what they wanted.  Some of the states greatest cities are in a death spiral as their streets have become crime-ridden, vagrant-filled, open sewers, and taxpaying businesses and residents are leaving in record numbers.  Unfortunately, every year as life in California gets progressively worse, the voters who have not yet left the state continue to re-elect the same progressive politicians that are causing the problems.