By Anabel Sosa
Violent crime and property crimes ticked up in California last year, while murders were down, according to an annual report the Attorney General’s office released just before the holiday weekend.
The office also issued an additional report on guns used in crimes — the first time the state has released an analysis on trends relating to “firearms that are illegally possessed, have been used in a crime, or are suspected of having been used in a crime.”
While the number of homicides in California declined from 2,361 in 2021 to 2,206 in 2022, other types of violent crimes — including robbery and assault — rose 6% last year.
The number of reported property crimes, such as burglary and theft, have gone down since 2017, with the exception of 2022, which saw a 6.2% increase.
Some Republicans suggest that Democrats are “in denial” about crime in California and that they should abandon their soft-on-crime approach.
- Senate GOP leader Brian Jones, from El Cajon: “Sadly, we are not surprised to learn that California’s violent and property crime rates increased in 2022.”
Gov. Newsom has addressed growing public concern over crime rates by fulfilling some promises he said would reform the criminal justice system, while also boosting crime-fighting efforts.
The gun death rate in California is far below the national average, and the state has some of the nation’s strictest gun laws. But after multiple mass shootings earlier this year, the Newsom administration sought to strengthen gun safety legislation. After the state was hit with a spike in retail theft last year, Newsom heightened the presence of police at shopping centers ahead of the holiday shopping season. And most recently, after a spate of burglaries in San Francisco’s downtown, Newsom told the San Francisco Chronicle that he plans to double state police in the city.
“Having access to good data is a cornerstone of responsible public policy. The data released today is essential for understanding, preventing, and combating crime,” said Attorney General Bonta via his office’s website.
“In 2022, California made significant progress towards reducing its homicide rates, but more remains to be done. While crime rates remain significantly below their historical highs, property and violent crimes continue to have devastating consequences for communities across the state, and gun violence remains a major threat to public safety. Despite having a gun death rate significantly below the national average, gun violence accounted for nearly three-fourths of all homicides in California in 2022. That is unacceptable. My office is committed to confronting these crimes head-on by holding law-breakers accountable, providing victims the resources they need to heal, and working proactively to prevent crime from happening in the first place.”
Other highlights from the 2022 report:
- Gun violence accounted for 75% of all homicides last year.
- The homicide rate decreased 5% in 2022 to 5.7 per 100,000 people, compared to the historic high of 12.9 in 1993.
- Homicide arrests also went down, by 4.2% from 1,550 in 2021 to 1,480 in 2022.
Merced County had the highest homicide rate; Santa Cruz County, the lowest. - Counties with higher populations tended to have higher numbers of crime guns. However, when accounting for crime guns per capita, a county’s population size did not appear to have any reliable correlation with its number of crime guns per person. In other words, more populous areas, like cities, were not necessarily more likely to recover more or fewer crime guns per capita than less populous area.
- Over the past decade, California experienced a significant increase in the number of crime guns recovered without serial numbers. In 2022, there was a 7% drop in the number of crime guns without serial numbers reported statewide, the first decrease recorded since 2013.
—Anable Sosa is a criminal justice reporting intern at CALMatters
