--- title: "California Homicide Rate Hits Its Lowest Mark Since the 1960s" description: "California recorded its fewest killings per capita in nearly six decades last year, and police solved a far larger share of the cases, according to new state figures — with Los Angeles posting its own lowest homicide rate since 1959." category: "California" category_url: https://herald.la/category/california author: "Valeria Ortiz" published: 2026-07-02T01:05:00.000Z updated: 2026-07-02T01:05:00.000Z canonical: https://herald.la/article/california-homicide-rate-hits-its-lowest-mark-since-the-1960s tags: ["crime", "homicide", "California", "Los Angeles", "public safety", "law enforcement"] --- # California Homicide Rate Hits Its Lowest Mark Since the 1960s California recorded its fewest killings per capita in nearly six decades last year, and police solved a far larger share of the cases, according to new state figures — with Los Angeles posting its own lowest homicide rate since 1959. California grew markedly less deadly last year, according to new state crime data — and the numbers are especially striking in Los Angeles. ## A number not seen in decades The state's homicide rate fell to 3.5 killings per 100,000 residents in 2025, the lowest since California began tracking the figure in 1966, according to data from Attorney General Rob Bonta's office [reported by CalMatters](https://calmatters.org/justice/2026/07/crime-statistics-homicide-rate/). That is down from 4.3 per 100,000 in 2024 and well below the pandemic-era peak of roughly 6 per 100,000 in 2021. Statewide, the number of homicides now sits about 18 percent below where it was before the pandemic. "At this point... additional contributing factors, beyond a return to normalcy, are likely to play a role," said Magnus Lofstrom, policy director at the Public Policy Institute of California, who added that police "ability to solve homicides may well be one." ## More cases solved Perhaps the most notable shift was in how often killings led to an arrest. California's homicide clearance rate climbed to 79 percent in 2025, up from 64 percent a year earlier and 55 percent in 2021, according to the state data. Lofstrom called the single-year jump the most surprising part of the report, saying it "will be important to unpack" to understand what drove it. The decline was not limited to homicide. The state also reported drops in robbery, vehicle theft, property crime and overall violent crime, suggesting a broad improvement rather than a one-category fluke. ## Los Angeles leads the drop Los Angeles shared fully in the trend. The city recorded a homicide rate of 5.9 per 100,000 residents in 2025 — its lowest since 1959, according to the figures — with three of the LAPD's four geographic bureaus posting year-over-year declines. Because Los Angeles has historically run above the statewide average, the improvement in the nation's second-largest city is a meaningful piece of the overall picture. ## Reasons for caution State officials were quick to claim credit: Bonta and Governor Gavin Newsom pointed to community violence-intervention programs and law-enforcement partnerships. Independent researchers were more measured, cautioning that the data shows what happened, not why. The clearance-rate surge is encouraging, Lofstrom said, but its causes — better investigative tools, more cooperation from communities, focused-deterrence efforts, or some combination — remain to be established. Analysts also note that pandemic-era data carries statistical noise; homicides spiked sharply in 2020 before the long decline that followed, and comparisons across decades must account for changes in how crimes are recorded. What the figures make clear, though, is that fewer Californians were killed in 2025 than in any year in a generation — and that more of those cases ended in an arrest. ## Sources - [California's homicide rate falls to historic low, police making more arrests](https://calmatters.org/justice/2026/07/crime-statistics-homicide-rate/) - [Crime in California — 2025](https://oag.ca.gov/crime)