What are general crime trends in California?

According to ppic.org crime trends in California are as follows:

Given the limitations of the available data for 2021, this fact sheet provides preliminary 2021 trends and focuses on data from 2020.

In 2021, some crime rates seemed to increase, with homicides continuing to rise.

Preliminary data from four of California’s major cities—Los Angeles, Oakland, San Diego, and San Francisco—show increases in property and violent crime numbers in 2021. In particular, the troubling increase in homicides that we saw in 2020 appears to continue—homicides in these cities were up by about 17% in 2021.

An increase in property crime in 2021, driven by car break-ins and auto thefts, returned property crime numbers close to pre-pandemic numbers. The need to continue monitoring crime trends, investigating underlying causes, and identifying effective solutions remains high.

While California’s violent crime rate had decreased somewhat in 2020, homicides and aggravated assaults had increased.

California’s violent crime rate decreased by 0.5% to 428 per 100,000 residents between 2019 and 2020, an unprecedented period marked by the global COVID-19 pandemic. This change was driven by declines in robberies (14.9%) and rape (9.5%).

Despite upticks in 2012 and from 2015 to 2017, the 2020 statewide violent crime rate was 2.6% below what it was in 2010, before California embarked on significant criminal justice reforms, and comparable to levels in the late 1960s. For 2020, California’s violent crime rate ranked 16th nationwide and was higher than the national rate of 387 per 100,000 residents.

While robbery and rape decreased, homicides increased by 30% and aggravated assaults went up by 7.5%. In 2020, 65% of reported violent crimes in California were aggravated assaults, 26% were robberies, 8% were rapes, and 1% were homicides.

California’s violent and property crime rates hit historic lows in 2020

SOURCES: Authors’ calculation based on Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Report 1960–2002 and the California Department of Justice’s Criminal Justice Statistics Center, California Crimes and Clearances Files, 2003–2020.

NOTE: Violent crime includes homicide, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault; property crime includes burglary, motor vehicle theft, and larceny theft (including non-felonious larceny theft).