📢 Justice Alert: Property Crime Reached Record Lows in 2024 — Before Prop 36 Even Took Effect

Just-released statistics from the California Department of Justice show property crime rates reached their lowest levels ever reliably recorded in 2024 — before the anti-reform Proposition 36 ever took effect (DOF, 2025; DOJ, 2025).

A decade of crime trends through 2024 refute the widespread alarm driven by viral videos, sensational news reports, anecdotes, and quips that 2014’s Proposition 47 reform increased property crimes. Property crime rates declined during much of the criminal justice reform era to reach record-low levels last year. While these rates fluctuated during the COVID-19 shutdowns and reopenings, they improved in 2023 and 2024. California’s larger public safety trends over the last half-century are even more encouraging and underscore the distortions present in today’s crime debate. Both violent and property crime rates were much higher in the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s when arrest and incarceration rates were at their peaks (see Figure 1).

In defiance of these facts, anti-reform advocates exploited the pandemic-related uptick in crime to advance punitive policies. Proposition 36, which increases penalties on certain low-level drug and property offenses, promised to lower crime. Yet, while supporters of the initiative campaigned on a purported crime surge, Californians were experiencing a year of record-low crime.