Violent and property crime rates decreased in 2024, most notably homicide, car break-ins, auto theft, and theft of car accessories. Most crime categories are now at or below pre-pandemic levels and California’s property crime rate is at its lowest level in three decades. However, despite decreases last year, aggravated assaults are still above 2019 numbers, and shoplifting continued to increase and is now 48% higher than it was before the pandemic.
The California Department of Justice recently released 2024 crime numbers. Some caution is warranted when comparing this new data to 2023, a year in which an unusually large number of law enforcement agencies in the state did not report data for all months of the year, and Oakland Police Department’s data included a substantial error in the reported number of aggravated assaults. Our analysis makes adjustments to address these issues.
The latest numbers point toward decreases in most crimes compared to 2023, with the violent crime rate dropping by 5.5% and the property crime rate falling by 10%. All four violent crime categories (homicide, rape, robbery, and aggravated assaults) saw decreases in 2024. However, the violent crime rate is still 9.6% above the pre-pandemic level, and is driven by aggravated assaults.
The property crime rate is now at its lowest level since at least 1985. Notably, auto thefts fell by 16.8% in 2024, the first year-over-year decrease since 2019. But auto thefts remain 19.1% higher than 2019 levels.
A look at monthly crime numbers gives us an opportunity to identify possible recent swings in crime trends. The data shows that commercial burglaries continued to decrease in 2024 and were slightly below pre-pandemic levels in the second half of the year. The notable increase in shoplifting, however, appears to have continued through last year. With a 13.8% increase in 2024, shoplifting is up by 47.5% compared to 2019. Combining reported shoplifting and commercial burglary incidents shows that retail theft increased by 3% in 2024 and is now 22.8% higher than in 2019.
Concerns about recent increases in retail theft have led to several policy responses, including the passing of Proposition 36 in November 2024 as well as legislative action and state investments focusing on organized retail theft.
As with any crime, not all incidents are reported to law enforcement agencies and captured by official statistics, and underreporting may change over time. Concerns have been raised that retailers stopped reporting some incidents in the wake of Prop 47, in reaction to less response by law enforcement and limited consequences for such crimes. Given the high level of media attention to retail theft in the last few years and efforts to combat the problem, it is possible that recent increases in reported shoplifting incidents partly reflect more complete reporting.
Another notable shift: thefts targeting cars have declined substantially, according to the monthly number of reported crimes. During the pandemic, there was a substantial jump in thefts of both vehicles and accessories, especially catalytic converters. Reported incidents of car break-ins, on the other hand, plummeted. In early 2023, car accessory thefts started to trend downward and were close to pre-pandemic levels by late 2024. Car break-ins have been declining since the beginning of the pandemic and the monthly number of reported incidents was close to half of 2019 levels by late last year. Meanwhile, auto thefts have been on a steep decline since mid-2023, and while the annual number of auto thefts in 2024 was higher than in 2019, the monthly data shows that auto thefts were close to pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2024.
The latest crime statistics provide mostly good news for Californians. Most of the crimes that saw notable increases during and after the pandemic fell in 2024. Although the number of homicides jumped in 2020 and continued to increase in 2021, it is now back to pre-pandemic levels. Monthly data also shows that thefts of cars and catalytic converters have been falling over the last 18 to 24 months and were roughly back to pre-pandemic levels by late last year. Retail theft, however, continued to rise. Monitoring these trends and continuing efforts to assess whether state actions and Prop 36 will reverse the recent increases in retail theft will be important moving forward.
