O.C. Crime Rate Dropped 14% in 1994 : Law enforcement: The decrease was the largest among California counties. The overall state figure declined to its lowest level in a decade.

Orange County’s crime rate dropped 14% last year, the largest decrease among California counties, state analysts reported Monday.

That figure reflected a statewide downturn; California’s crime rate dropped to its lowest level in a decade last year, according to the report by the Office of the Legislative Analyst, the Legislature’s nonpartisan fiscal adviser.

The report found decreases in all major crime categories: homicide, rape, robbery, assault, burglary, automobile theft, larceny-theft and arson.

The crime rate dropped by 6.5% from 1993 to 1994, to about 3,148 reported crimes per 100,000 population, the lowest since 1984. About two-thirds of all crimes involve property, and the remaining third involve violence, a ratio that has remained constant for more than four decades.

Most of the state’s 10 largest cities reported drops in the crime rate in 1994, led by San Francisco, which reported a 21% decrease, while San Jose’s overall crime rate increased by 6%.

On July 7, the California attorney general’s office reported that Orange County’s crime rate had declined by 8.1% in 1994 from the year before.

The latest report concluded that the continued aging of the general population, “the relative stability of the illegal drug trade [and the corresponding reductions in drug-related violence] that has been reported by many law enforcement organizations, and the possible deterrent effects of recent enactment of criminal sentencing legislation, such as the ‘three strikes and you’re out’ law, contributed to the crime-rate drop.”

But state analysts said it may just be a temporary dip that will end with expected increases in the juvenile population.

The study also noted that despite the “short-run trends, California’s crime rate is up substantially from the 1950s and 1960s. The 1994 crime rate is about 82% higher than it was in 1964, and 250% higher than in 1952,” the legislative analyst’s report noted.

The report also said that a new increase in the crime rate is expected because of the “projected increases in the juvenile population in the future. . . . The juvenile population is expected to increase rapidly over the next 10 years, and juvenile crime is likely to increase commensurately.”

California, with about 32 million people, has about 130,000 state prison inmates.

The legislative analyst’s office said that crime statistics give an incomplete picture of the actual level of criminal activity, because most crimes are not reported. For example, a 1992 study said that two-thirds of all crimes went unreported.