Reforms Did Not Bring More Crime. Rates Are Near Record Lows.
Mike Males, Ph.D., Senior Research Fellow
Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice
July 2024 Research Brief
Both right- and left-wing sources are peddling a false narrative that California is awash in unheard-of crime and drug abuse, worse than anywhere else, and liberal reforms and prosecutors are at fault. These blatant distortions, perpetuated by Fox News (Perino, 2024), the Heritage Foundation (Colton, 2023; Males, 2023), Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco (Miller, 2024), The Young Turks (Kasparian, 2024) and many others, recite inflammatory anecdotes, quips, and selective, deliberately misleading “statistics” from anti-reform entities. This report is the first of a series that challenges these deceptions by presenting comprehensive data from standard sources.
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