Over the past two months, I looked at crime statistics collected by the California Department of Justice for the years 2003 through 2007. The statistics are kept for each California county and are normalized per 100,000 population so that you can compare counties of differing sizes without distorting the comparison. I looked at the numbers for violent crimes such as homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault; for property crimes such as burglary, auto theft and theft greater than $400; and for larceny such as thefts from autos below $400.

I compared San Francisco with two other groups of California counties:
• The four Bay Area counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo and Santa Clara
• Eight large urban counties including the four Bay Area counties plus Los Angeles, Orange, Sacramento, and San Diego Counties.

In June, I reported the results for crimes reported per 100,000 population:

Counties Violent Property Larceny
compared crimes crimes crimes
San Francisco 766 1,777 2,852
4 Bay Area 440 1,851 1,418
8 large urban 483 1,929 1,301

In July, I reported the arrests rates per 100,000 population, which were:

Counties Violent Property Larceny
compared crimes crimes crimes
San Francisco 556 552 1,687
4 Bay Area 319 428 664
8 large urban 369 463 727

These crime-reporting statistics show that San Francisco had 58 percent more violent crimes and 119 percent more larceny thefts from autos when compared with other large urban counties. The arrest statistics show that the SFPD had 51 percent more arrests for violent crimes when compared to the other urban counties, which closely follows the 58 percent more crimes. For larcenies, the SFPD arrest rate was 132 percent higher than the other counties, which is a higher arrest rate than the crimes reported. In property crimes, SFPD’s arrest rate was 19 percent higher than the other counties, even though it had a lower rate of property crime.

So the statistics show that SFPD is responding to the higher crime rate in San Francisco by making proportionately more arrests. This would tend to show that the higher crime rate in San Francisco is not due to the perception that SFPD is “soft” on criminal arrests. To understand what else might be accounting for the higher crime rate in San Francisco, I looked at another set of statistics kept by the California Department of Corrections. These statistics measure the number of admissions to state prison, based on the county where the conviction was obtained.

For the years 2003 through 2007, the annual average admissions to state prison per 100,000 population were:

Counties State prison
compared admissions
San Francisco 54
4 Bay Area 96
8 large urban 126

Even though San Francisco had significantly higher rates of violent crime and larceny, and even though the San Francisco Police Department was making a correspondingly higher number of arrests, the conviction rate in San Francisco was about half of other Bay Area counties and less than half of the eight urban counties.

This would tend to show that our problem lies in the district attorney’s office and in our courts. If you are a criminal in the Bay Area and you come to San Francisco to commit your crime, you are just as likely to be arrested for the crime, but you are only half as likely to end up in state prison.