The report from the Public Policy Institute of California evaluated the impact of the pandemic on arrests in the state comparing data from January 2020 through July 2021 and found that although there were some decreases in certain crimes, those categorized as violent—aggravated assault, auto thefts, and homicides—increased.
“Both in California and the rest of the country, homicides increased an unprecedented amount from year over year ... and this likely led to both Californians and Americans in general growing more concerned about crime,” lead researcher Deepak Premkumar said during a Feb. 9 debriefing on the findings.
But the increase in violent crime is “currently not well understood,” according to Premkumar.
“It appears not to be specific to California,” he told The Epoch Times. “Also ... it’s important to not conflate our findings on the trends in arrests with trends in crime. They certainly are related, but do deviate at times.”
However, the report discovered that a driving force behind the drop in other criminal activity was the shelter-in-place orders.
The report also used data dating as far back as 2018 regarding arrests for further historical context.
According to the report, the number of people arrested for more serious crimes stayed about the same between January 2018 and February 2020.
But arrests overall in California plummeted in the early stages of the pandemic—in March 2020—driven mostly by fewer misdemeanor arrests.
This was largely attributed to the statewide shelter-in-place order and other temporary policies that altered interactions between law enforcement and the public, as well as the public with potential criminal activity, according to the report.
The report also looked at the population within California’s jails and prisons.
At the onset of the pandemic, public health officials feared that the virus would spread rapidly among some congregant settings, including jails and prisons.
With this in mind, measures and policies were initiated, including that officers were directed to avoid arrests; jails and prisons released some inmates early and some courts introduced zero-bail orders for misdemeanors and some low-level felonies, all of which were efforts to stop the spread.
“The downstream consequences of this are that they contributed to significant declines in the jail population,” Premkumar said.
Regarding those that were arrested, the report noted that felony arrests had briefly declined during the early months of the pandemic but by six or seven months later had increased by 10 percent.
While some COVID-related policies and measures related to criminals expired after a few months, California continued to see declines in both felony and misdemeanor arrests until at least July 2021, according to the study.
Felony arrests by the fall of 2020 were down by 5 percent compared to the start of 2020 and those for misdemeanors were down by 40 percent. The reductions were largely among lower-level offenses, such as drug and driving offenses, the report states.
According to the report, the reduction in arrests was simply because Californians were staying at home more.
However, in 2021, the connection between mobility and arrests was less pronounced, as arrests stayed about the same compared to 2020.
The report also discovered that the percentage of changes in arrests was comparable among different racial and ethnic groups.
However, after the death of George Floyd in May 2020 and the resulting protests broke out in the state and across the country, there was a noticeable increase in misdemeanor arrests across all races, with an increase of 9 to 15 percent compared to previous weeks.
Premkumar said the temporary increase in arrests occurred in late May 2020, right after the death of Floyd and during which many protests took place.
“However, the increase in arrests cannot necessarily be attributed to the protests themselves, but we can say the increase in arrests were likely caused by his death,” he said.
The number of felony arrests for black Californians rose by 43 percent during this time, which was significantly higher compared to the increases of roughly 10 percent for other races.
Another factor that led to a decrease in arrests overall was the reduction of police stops and formal enforcement. The largest local law enforcement agencies in the state made 35 percent fewer stops at the onset of the pandemic until at least the end of 2020, and when they did make stops, they handled them differently, according to the report.
In the months before the outbreak of COVID-19, the study noted, approximately 40 percent of weekly arrests for felonies were rearrests within a 90-day period. During the majority of the pandemic, this figure remained steady, but it suddenly decreased to 32 percent in June 2021.
Despite this decrease, the percentage of rearrests for felonies actually increased from 29 percent to 32 percent, before dropping in June 2021.
This phenomenon of rearrests caused officials to be skeptical of some of the policies put in place to reduce the jail population, according to researchers.
“Particularly those in law enforcement were concerned that the zero bail orders would have what is called a ‘revolving door effect,’ in which a law enforcement officer arrests an individual and then that individual is released, and they commit more crime and they’re arrested again, cycling in and out of the criminal justice system,” Premkumar said.
Vern Pierson, district attorney of El Dorado County in Northern California, told The Epoch Times that there’s more context needed to understand the report.
“For instance, the changes in arrest numbers do not directly correlate to crimes committed or crimes reported,” he said. “They mention certain crimes are up, like homicides and vehicle theft, and others like theft are down.”
Pierson said homicides may be more accurately reported because of the nature of the crime. Similarly, he said that “vehicle thefts are more accurately reported because insurance companies require police reports.”
In addition to Pierson’s remarks, the report acknowledges the difficulties in interpreting the trends mentioned.
“The causes of these trends are hard to discern, given the highly unusual and challenging context of the pandemic,” the report reads.
