Crime data far more complex than rehashed political rhetoric

Recent polling from Gallup finds that 80% of Americans worry a “great deal” or a “fair amount” about crime, which is the highest level of concern since 2016. That shouldn’t be a surprise given that U.S. murder rates are the highest they’ve been since 1996

While overall property crime has declined nationwide in the last decade, it has soared in some jurisdictions such as San Francisco — and high-profile smash-and-grab robberies in our urban areas have understandably set the public on edge. Californians have reason to feel less safe, but they need to remain skeptical of the latest political narratives.

For instance, GOP proponents of tougher crime laws have blamed the crime wave on progressive district attorneys such as George Gascón in Los Angeles County and on Proposition 47, which reclassified some felonies as misdemeanors, and other recent criminal-justice reforms.

Yet an analysis from the well-respected Public Policy Institute of California found that in 2020 only two of California’s 15 most-populous counties saw spikes in both violent and property crime rates. Those were Orange County and Fresno County, which also has a Republican DA. There’s a time lag with official crime data (and not all property crimes are reported), but these numbers dispute the easy cause-and-effect explanations.

“Violence actually surged more between 2019 and 2021” in Sacramento “than it did in L.A.,” according to a recent Los Angeles Times report, noting the capital city’s 67% three-year homicide spike. “A winter of worry: Sacramento’s violent crime rate in January puts a chill on the community,” blared a headline in the Sacramento News and Review. The story was based on numbers before the city’s recent mass shooting.

There’s a legitimate debate about the policies of progressive DAs, including their decision to charge fewer people with lower-level property crimes, reluctance to charge teens as adults and refusal to seek the death penalty. However, it’s never been easy to determine the causes of crime hikes and drops. It’s hard to blame California-specific policies when crime rates are up nationwide.

DA policies and policing strategies are part of the mix, but criminologists point to an array of potential demographic and societal crime-related factors — including the impact of the COVID-19 and the availability of drugs and firearms. The Times analysis found that, “felony filing rates have not changed since Gascón took office” but that “law enforcement’s success in capturing dangerous criminals has.”

In fact, one research paper from February, from George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, surveyed crime rates in 35 jurisdictions that elected progressive prosecutors and found “no significant effects of these reforms on local crime rates.”

We’ve supported a number of these reforms and have taken issue with others, but we’d urge voters to consider the complexities of the crime situation before abandoning support for long-overdue justice reforms amid a torrent of tough-on-crime rhetoric.