For more information or to

schedule an interview, contact

Naren Daniel at:
(646) 292-8381 or
naren.daniel@nyu.edu.

California Fact Sheet:

What Caused the Crime Decline?
By Lauren-Brooke Eisen, Julia Bowling*
A new Brennan Center report, What Caused the Crime Decline?, examines 14 different theories for the
massive decline in crime across the country over the last two decades. It provides a rigorous
empirical analysis conducted by a team of economics and criminal justice researchers on over 40
years of data, gathered from all 50 states and the 50 largest cities.
New Report Findings
Over the past 40 years, states across the country have sought to fight crime by implementing policies
to increase incarceration. The result: The United States is now the largest jailor in the world. With 5
percent of the worlds population, we have 25 percent of its prisoners.
In California, the prison population grew by 514 percent from 1980 to 2006. By 2011, the U.S.
Supreme Court ordered the state to reduce its imprisonment levels due to unconstitutional prison
conditions and severe overcrowding. In response, California implemented laws that helped cut its
number of prisoners to 122,800 by 2013. California spent $8.618 billion on corrections in 2013.
At the same time, between 1980 and 2013, crime in California dropped by 61 percent. And the
national crime rate was cut in half.
What caused this drop? Was it the explosion in incarceration? Or was it something else?
The reports central findings:

Increased incarceration had a limited effect on reducing crime for the last two
decades: Increased incarceration had some effect, likely somewhere around 0-10 percent,
on reducing crime from 1990 to 2000. Since 2000, however, increased incarceration had an
almost zero effect on crime. Further, a number of states -- California, Michigan, New Jersey,
New York, and Texas -- have successfully reduced imprisonment while crime continued to
fall.
Other factors reduced crime: Increased numbers of police officers, some data-driven
policing techniques, changes in income, decreased alcohol consumption, and an aging

* Lauren-Brooke Eisen is Counsel and Julia Bowling is Research Associate at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law. They
are co-authors of What Caused the Crime Decline?

population played a role in reducing crime. In particular, this report finds that the policing
technique known as CompStat is associated with a 5 to 15 percent decrease in crime. A
review of past research indicates that consumer confidence and inflation also likely
contributed to crime reduction.
Incarceration & Crime in California
As shown in Figure 1, Californian imprisoned 355 people per 100,000, lower than the U.S. at large,
yet still high.
Californias prison population started to decline modestly in 2006 after the Governor declared a
state of crisis due to severe overcrowding. Several emergency measures were enacted to avert the
prison crisis. In 2011, Gov. Jerry Brown signed the Public Safety Realignment Act. Realignment
shifted low-level offenders from state prisons to local jails and then encouraged their release from
jails. More recently, in November 2014, more than 4 million Californians voted in favor of
Proposition 47, a ballot initiative requiring certain low-level drug and theft offenses to be sentenced
as misdemeanors and affecting thousands of current and future offenders.
Figure 1: Imprisonment Rates in California and the U.S. (1980-2013)

As shown in Figure 2, as incarceration rose from 1980 (when California had 24,569 prisoners), the
effectiveness of increased incarceration adding new prisoners steadily declined. By 1997,
imprisonment increased five-fold to 132,523 prisoners, and effectiveness on crime declined to
essentially zero. The marginal effect on crime of adding more people to prisons remains at
essentially zero today.
This reports findings support further reforms to reduce Californias incarcerated population and
show this can be achieved without added crime.

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Figure 2: Effectiveness of Imprisonment on Crime in California (1980-2013)

Policing & Crime

One policing approach, CompStat, which instills strong management and data-driven practices,
played a role in bringing down crime in cities where implemented. The introduction of CompStatstyle programs was responsible for a 5 to 15 percent decrease in crime in the 50 largest cities
nationally.
CompStat was widely implemented in American cities starting in the 1990s. In California, CompStat
was introduced in San Diego (1999), Sacramento (1998-1999), Los Angeles (2002), Fresno (2006),
Oakland (2009), and San Francisco (2009).
Little analysis has been conducted on the effectiveness of how police fight crime. CompStat is one of
the most consistent, easily identifiable, and widespread policing techniques employed during the
time period under examination. Although different cities deploy it differently, the general objective is
the same: to implement strong management and accountability within police departments to execute
strategies based in robust data collection to reduce and prevent crime. Our research also found that
increased numbers of police officers also played a role in reducing crime.
Conclusion
Public and political pressure to effectively fight crime and improve public safety has been used to
justify incarceration despite the economic and human toll. This report finds that this one-size fits
all use of imprisonment to punish crime has passed the point of diminishing returns. In essence,
adding more and more people to prison is no longer producing the expected crime control benefits.
As state budgets grow tighter, government should invest in policies that achieve their intended goals.
Prioritizing modern, evidence-based criminal justice policies with record of success over costly and
ineffective over-incarceration seems to be the best way forward in California and nationwide.
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