Crime Rate Hits 30-Year Low, Lungren Says

With a figurative bow, state Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren on Monday announced a historic drop in California’s crime rate, reporting that the state is now the safest it has been in more than a generation.

In a speech mixing the ceremony of constitutional office with the self-promotion of a stump speech, the GOP gubernatorial hopeful said a 1997 crime dip continues a trend that started in 1993 and marks the biggest sustained four-year drop in state history.

Hitting its lowest level since 1967, the state’s crime rate fell 7.4% during the first nine months of 1997, led by a 15.5% drop in homicides and a 14% reduction in robberies.

“We have gone from the L.A. riots to the California revival,” Lungren said.

Criminal justice experts disagree about the causes of the falling crime rate across California and the rest of the nation, citing everything from an improved economy to tougher sentencing to shifting demographics to stabilization of the crack cocaine market.

Whatever the cause, the sunny statistics presented the sort of upbeat election year snapshot that incumbent politicians dream about.

“Had our 1993 crime rate continued unabated over these past four years, nearly 730,000 more crimes would have been committed in our state, including 190,000 violent crimes,” Lungren said. “We would have suffered nearly 3,800 more homicide victims. Five thousand more women would have been rape victims, and 316,000 more homes would have been burglarized.”

Dismissing those who cite economic or other reasons, Lungren credited the improvement to the sort of get-tough policies he has advocated since becoming the state’s top law enforcement officer seven years ago. Specifically, he cited California’s three-strikes life sentence law for repeat offenders and a statewide reporting system that publicly tracks paroled sex offenders.

“All this did not happen by accident,” Lungren said, citing as well the accelerated building of prisons that started in the 1980s, along with a change in public attitudes that “stopped accepting excuses for crime.”

Lungren endorsed continuation of the state’s massive prison construction program and called for further steps to crack down on crime: increasing penalties for certain juvenile offenders and stiffening mandatory sentences for residential burglars caught with a gun.

Asked how much of the state budget he would favor spending on prisons, Lungren said simply, “whatever is necessary” until crime is reduced to the level of the 1950s, “when we could let our kids walk to school without fear that they would be attacked.”

Lungren has delivered his annual State of Public Safety address for the last several years before the same audience of Sacramento civic leaders. Despite its authoritative ring, the ritual is one that Lungren created and the speech--and the goods news it contained--had special significance coming just weeks before Lungren officially kicks off his gubernatorial candidacy.

He used the occasion to take a swipe at one of his rivals, Democratic businessman Al Checchi, who unveiled his own crime-fighting package last month, seeking to put greater emphasis on prevention over punishment and prison building.

Responding to questions from the audience and reporters afterward, Lungren scoffed at Checchi’s “crime-fighting record as head of Northwest Airlines” and accused him of “pandering” by calling for the death penalty for child molesters and serial rapists.

“That is nothing but an exaggerated statement that misleads people,” Lungren, a firm death penalty supporter, said of Checchi’s position, which the courts have found of dubious constitutionality.

Asked if he should be accepting so much credit for the state’s crime drop, Lungren suggested that voters will have to make that decision. But he hastily added: “They certainly would hold me accountable if crime was going the opposite direction and the criminal justice system was falling apart.”