How Crime and Crime Politics Rise and Fall in California

from Dan WaltersCalMatters

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

Sensational crimes such as the kidnapping in 1993 and the murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas caused a frenzy against crime and new laws, including the scandalous ones three strikes measure.

Portraying Democrats as soft on criminals, Republicans dominated US presidential, Senate and gubernatorial elections and made big gains in the Legislature.

Jerry BrownThe Democratic governor, who took office in 1975 as the anti-crime movement was gaining momentum, felt the backlash, forcing him to sign a series of tough-on-crime bills that Democratic lawmakers introduced to appease voters.

Brown’s opposition to the death penalty was a factor in his unsuccessful 1982 bid for a seat in the United States Senate. Voters instead chose Republican Pete Wilson and selected another Republican, death penalty advocate George Deukmedjian, to succeed Brown as governor. Eight years later, Wilson won the governorship.

In 1986, voters not only reelected Dukmejian as governor, but they removed three of Brown’s appointees to the state Supreme Courtinclusive Chief Justice Rose Bird. Bird and justice Cruz Reynoso and Joseph Grodin have made opposition to the death penalty evident in their rulings.

Although he has signed bills to put more criminals behind bars, Brown has been reluctant to build new prisons to house the skyrocketing number of criminals. That changed when Deukmejian became governor. During the 16 years of his and Pete Wilson’s governorships, the state built dozens of new prisons as the prison population climbed from about 24,000 in 1980. a peak of 173,000 in 2006.

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

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

Crime as a political problem began to decline in the late 1990s, as did crime as an obvious threat.

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

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

The more recent decline is as well something of a mystery. And it was accompanied by a turnaround in criminal justice policy.

In 2011, federal courts forced California to reduce its prison population due to overcrowding. The current population, about 90,000, is barely half of its peak. And one by one, the prisons are closing.

Jerry Brown, who had signed many blocking bills during his first governorship, returned to office in 2011 and advocated a softer approach. He sponsored a vote in 2014, Proposition 47which made it much easier for inmates serving sentences for crimes considered non-violent to get parole by redefining “non-violent” to cover some fairly serious crimes.

Other ballot measures and laws passed by the Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom continue to crack down on lawbreakers.

However, in 2024, voters passed Proposition 36, which tightened the loose provisions of Proposition 47 and signaled at least a slight backlash, possibly led by a wave of smash-and-grab robberies.

Whether this backlash is gaining ground or California continues to weaken penalties is a question that awaits an answer.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.