California recorded broad declines across nearly every major crime category in 2025, according to the annual statistical reports released Wednesday by Attorney General Rob Bonta.

Falling across the board

The statewide violent crime rate fell 10.2 percent, to 431.1 offenses per 100,000 residents from 480.3 a year earlier, the Department of Justice said — far below the 1,103.9 peak recorded in 1992. Property crime dropped 14.3 percent. Robbery fell 19.9 percent, to its lowest rate since 1959, and motor vehicle theft — a flashpoint of the pandemic years — posted the largest single decline, down 25.8 percent.

A record low for homicide

The most striking figure was homicide. California logged 1,374 killings in 2025, down 17.5 percent from 1,666 the year before. Measured as a rate, homicide fell to 3.5 per 100,000 residents, the lowest since the state began collecting the data in 1966. It caps a steady retreat from the pandemic surge of 2020, when the rate spiked to 5.5.

Los Angeles tracked the trend. The city recorded 230 homicides in 2025, down about 18 percent from 284 in 2024 and its lowest total since 1966, according to the Los Angeles Police Department, with shooting victims down 8 percent.

Caution on causes

Researchers welcomed the numbers but warned against tidy explanations. Mike Males, a senior research fellow at the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, noted that "large declines in crime occurred both before and after Proposition 36 took effect and are taking place across the U.S.," cautioning against crediting any single policy. Violence-prevention scholars have similarly said the country lacks the data to pinpoint what drove a national post-pandemic drop.

The DOJ also flagged a methodological caveat: California is transitioning to a new incident-based reporting system, and not every agency submitted a full year of 2025 data. The agency pointed readers to the limitations section of each report.

The longer arc

Placed against 2019, the shift is substantial: the state's robbery rate is down 31 percent, property crime down 24 percent and the homicide rate down 20 percent, the governor's office said. Bonta credited investments in community violence-intervention programs and cooperation among law-enforcement agencies — while independent analysts stressed that a nationwide decline suggests forces larger than any one state's policy mix are at work. The full reports are posted on the DOJ's OpenJustice data portal.