How crime and the politics of crime rise and fall in California

For two decades, beginning in the late 1970s, the most powerful issue in California politics was crime.

Sensational crimes such as the 1993 kidnapping and murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas fueled anti-crime furor and new laws, including the infamous three strikes measure.

By depicting Democrats as soft on criminals, Republicans dominated elections for president, U.S. Senate and the governorship and made strong gains in the Legislature.

Jerry Brown, the Democratic governor who took office in 1975 as the anti-crime movement was gathering steam, felt the backlash, compelling him to sign a string of tough anti-crime bills that Democratic legislators carried to placate voters.

Brown’s opposition to the death penalty was a factor in his failed 1982 bid for a U.S. Senate seat. Voters instead opted for Republican Pete Wilson and elected another Republican, capital punishment advocate George Deukmejian, to succeed Brown as governor. Eight years later, Wilson won the governorship.

In 1986, voters not only re-elected Deukmejian as governor, but they ousted three of Brown’s state Supreme Court appointees, including Chief Justice Rose Bird. Bird and Justices Cruz Reynoso and Joseph Grodin had made opposition to the death penalty obvious in their rulings.

Although he had signed bills to put more criminals behind bars, Brown was reluctant to build new prisons to house a sharply rising number of felons. That changed when Deukmejian became governor. In the 16 years of his and Pete Wilson’s governorships, the state built dozens of new prisons, as the number of inmates climbed from about 24,000 in 1980 to a peak of 173,000 in 2006.

Crime as a powerful political issue was not as irrational as some critics have contended. The latest report on California crime, released by Attorney General Rob Bonta, confirms that in both absolute and relative terms, the state during the 1980s and 1990s saw sharp increases in criminal behavior, particularly violent crimes such as murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault.

In 1980, there were 209,903 such crimes reported, more than twice the 1970 total. Violent crimes hit a high water mark of 345,508 in 1992, and homicides a high of 4,005 in 1993. Relatively, violent crimes reached a high of 1,079.8 incidents per 100,000 Californians in 1991.

Crime as a political issue began to taper off in the late 1990s, as did crime as a demonstrable threat.

In 2025, there were 170,397 violent crimes reported — less than half the 1992 record — and the crime rate declined to 431.1 crimes per 100,000 Californians, well under half of the 1991 mark.

Why crime exploded during the 1980s and early 1990s has never been fully explained, although many possibilities have been advanced.

The more recent decline is also something of a mystery. And it’s been accompanied by a reversal in criminal justice politics.

Federal courts in 2011 compelled California to reduce its inmate population due to overcrowding. The current population, about 90,000, is scarcely half the peak. And one-by-one, prisons are being closed.

Jerry Brown, who had signed numerous lock-‘em-up bills during his first governorship, returned to the position in 2011 and championed more lenient treatment. He sponsored a 2014 ballot measure, Proposition 47, that made it much easier for inmates serving time for offenses deemed nonviolent to gain parole by redefining “nonviolent” to cover some pretty serious offenses.

Other ballot measures and laws enacted by the Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom have continued to soften the treatment of lawbreakers.

However, in 2024, voters passed Proposition 36, which tightened up the loose provisions of Prop. 47 and signaled at least a mild backlash, likely driven by a surge of smash-and-grab robberies.

Whether that backlash gains strength or California continues to ease off on punishment is a question that awaits an answer.