The Brief

Californians have gone back and forth on crime and punishment for years.

In 1994, they voted for harsher criminal penalties and a three-strikes law.

Twenty years later, in 2014, nearly 60% of voters approved Proposition 47, which sought to reduce the state’s prison and jail populations by changing some felony crimes into misdemeanors and directing more state money to drug and mental health rehabilitation.

Now, another 10 years on, Californians are apparently ready to reverse course again by undoing some of the changes made by Prop. 47. A new poll shows they support by a wide margin the November ballot measure Proposition 36, which would toughen sentences for certain property and drug crimes.

Treating California voters as a predictable monolith is a national pastime, but it doesn’t appear to be true. Voters in the last 30 years have reversed course once on criminal justice and appear ready to do so again.

Here are six other myths about California crime — from street violence and guns to prisons and death row — and the truth behind them.

Myth: Street-level crime makes California cities unlivable

If crime is making California cities unlivable today, then it stands to reason that California cities must have been more livable in the last few decades, because crime must have been lower.

Except that’s not remotely the case. Statewide in 2023, the violent crime rate was 511 per 100,000 people. The high, in 1992, was slightly more than double that rate.

Even back then, and despite a violent uprising after a jury acquitted four police officers of assault in the beating of Rodney King, Los Angeles made Money Magazine’s top 50 most livable cities in 1992. So did San Francisco, Oakland and San Diego.

California’s overall violent crime drop has been huge, falling 47% between 1993 and 2022, the last year for which national data is available. The state has mirrored a slightly bigger violent crime rate drop of 49% during the same period.

The last time the violent crime rate was as low as it is now: 1970.

Property crime hit its high in California in 1980, and hasn’t returned to those levels in any decade since.

Even so, a pandemic jump in state property crime levels, especially larcenies, has alarmed many retailers and residents of some major cities, including Oakland.

Those concerns led to a raft of retail theft laws Newsom signed recently, making it easier to prosecute suspects accused of property crimes. They also shaped Prop. 36, the November ballot measure backed by district attorneys and major retailers to increase penalties for some theft and drug crimes – something the governor opposes.

The California Rehabilitation Center in Norco.

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Myth: California opened up its prisons 15 years ago, putting criminals back on the street

Decades of tough-on-crime laws in the 1980s and 1990s created a problem for California prisons: There were too many inmates and nowhere to put them. At its most crowded point in 2006, California prisons housed 173,000 people, more than double the system’s designed capacity.

In 2009, a three-judge federal panel declared overcrowding to be the main reason for health care deficiencies in the prison system, and mandated that the state reduce its prison population by about 30%.

The result was a decade-long experiment in criminal justice called “realignment.” By reducing the number of crimes that were considered felonies, California’s prisons slowly dropped their numbers – about 92,000 people this year – and they are expected to keep dropping.

That meant more people started serving their sentences in jails instead of prisons for crimes that were non-violent, non-serious and non-sexual. The change helped contribute to a lower incarceration rate statewide.

In 2014, voters went further, approving Prop. 47, which reduced certain property and drug crimes from felonies to misdemeanors. Those changes are now up for reconsideration with Prop. 36.

So while California didn’t simply open its prison doors, it did conduct the biggest reduction in a state prison population in U.S. history.

Now, 17 other states and the federal Bureau of Prisons are housing more inmates than their prisons were designed to hold and eyeing California’s experience as a potential model.

Myth: Prop. 47 is the main reason California’s prison population dropped

Supporters of Prop. 47 pledged the measure would save the state billions of dollars while also helping to reduce the populations of the state’s overcrowded prisons.

Inmate numbers dropped steadily for most of the last decade, then rapidly during the pandemic. A year-long study by the Public Policy Institute of California found that inmate releases during the COVID-19 pandemic were a much bigger factor in bringing the population of both prisons and jails down.

With a much larger prison population, California’s incarceration rate dropped 8% after Prop. 47 became law, according to the report’s analysis. Between 2014 and 2019, the prison population dropped from 135,000 to about 120,000, or about 11%.

By comparison, the prison population in the height of the pandemic between March 2020 and February 2021 dropped 23%, from 123,100 to 94,600.

Myth: California gun laws are ineffective

California voters have consistently supported stern gun control measures, a decision partly taken out of their hands when, in 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court threw out New York state’s tight restrictions on who can carry a concealed firearm in public.

Since then, Newsom has tried to generate support for his proposed U.S. Constitutional amendment that would place new nationwide restrictions on gun ownership – to little avail so far.

California’s gun control laws include some of the nation’s most expansive, from waiting periods and background checks to gun storage and licensing.

The health statistics argue California’s gun laws are protecting lives. According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, California had the sixth-lowest gun death rate in the country in 2022, the last year for which statistics were available.

In large urban counties between 1984 and 2015, the National Institutes of Health found that right-to-carry and stand your ground laws were associated with increases in firearm homicides, while background checks associated with getting a gun permit and laws prohibiting people convicted of violent misdemeanors were associated with decreases in firearm homicides.

California gun control measures conclusively do not work for gun rights advocates. The California Rifle and Pistol Association objects not only to the restrictions on purchasing firearms, they also say that the process to keep a firearm you’ve already bought is made more onerous by at least 111 gun laws and the administrative rules created by the state attorney general.

The Giffords Law Center, which supports gun control measures, gives California among its highest grades for gun control measures. The National Rifle Association, which argues for less-restrictive gun laws, says the opposite – that California’s gun laws make the state one of the worst for gun owners.

Anti-death penalty protester Katie Wilde holds a placard during a rally and a march in front of the Federal Building on Sept. 28, 2010 in Westwood.

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Myth: There’s no death penalty in California, and therefore more violent crime

It’s an unusual situation: There are 623 people on California’s death row, the largest condemned population in the country, yet none of them is likely to be executed.

The state last carried out an execution in 2006. Newsom issued a moratorium on them in 2019, meaning the death chamber would not reopen at least during his administration.

California still has the death penalty on its books. When voters were asked to consider abolishing the death penalty in 2012 with Proposition 34, they declined, voting 53% to 47% to keep it. A similar ballot measure was rejected by nearly identical numbers in 2016.

But a 2019 poll by the Public Policy Institute of California found that 62% of respondents favor abolishing the death penalty in favor of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

When it comes to the death penalty’s effect on violent crime, researchers need to go back to the 1990s, when the state routinely carried out executions.

A 1999 study by the academic journal Homicide Studies found that after an execution in the state’s gas chamber in 1992, the homicide rate briefly dropped, then actually went up for at least four months after the executions, something the researchers referred to as the “brutalization effect.”

While the researchers don’t flatly state that capital punishment leads to more violent crime, they found that it almost certainly doesn’t deter it.

Myth: Undocumented immigrants commit crimes in California at a higher rate than the rest of the population

Stephen Miller, a Santa Monica native and adviser to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, said in a contentious interview after a Sept. 10 presidential debate that undocumented migrants are committing violent crimes that shock the conscience. He then pointed to Vice President Kamala Harris, the former California attorney general.

“I’m trusting the fact that Kamala Harris is letting illegal immigrants into this country who are raping and murdering children,” Miller said, echoing previous allegations from Trump on the rate of violent crimes by migrants.

The foundation of Miller’s argument is unsound. Repeated studies – from libertarian think tanks analyzing Texas statistics to Stanford researchers looking at California crimes – have found undocumented immigrants commit fewer crimes than people born in the U.S.

A study published two days after the September presidential debate by the U.S. Department of Justice’s research agency summarized six years of drug, property, traffic and violent crime.

“Undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half the rate of native-born U.S. citizens for violent and drug crimes,” the study authors wrote, “and a quarter the rate of native-born citizens for property crimes.”

The U.S. job market unexpectedly stalled in July.

A report Friday from the Labor Department shows that employers cut 23,000 jobs last month, and job gains for May and June were revised sharply lower.

The unemployment rate dipped to 4.1%, but only because more than 260,000 people dropped out of the workforce.

It was the second month in a row that the monthly jobs tally came in weaker than forecasters had expected.

"We are increasingly hearing from workers that they are anxious about their job security and they are frustrated by the fact that they are stuck in roles that are not necessarily good for them," said Daniel Zhao, chief economist at the job search website Glassdoor. "And that's on top of workers who are not in a job right now and feel frozen out of the job market."

Glassdoor's worker confidence index slumped in July to a record low.

The Fed's job gets harder

Restaurants and retailers cut thousands of jobs last month, and local government also saw large job losses. Healthcare continued to add workers, but at a more modest pace than earlier in the year.

The softening job market may complicate the Federal Reserve's job, since it's also battling stubborn inflation. The Fed may be more cautious about raising interest rates at a time when the labor market appears less stable.

For people who are working, average wages have risen 3.2% in the last 12 months. That's likely not enough to keep pace with inflation, however, so workers' paychecks don't stretch as far as they used to.

"Part of the reason that workers are feeling bad about today's job market," Zhao says, is that "a lot of those wage gains have been eaten up by rising energy prices."

Copyright 2026 NPR

It seems that jazz is everywhere in Los Angeles. Blue Note opened a club last year, venues like Sam First, Catalina’s, Vibrato and the Baked Potato draw large crowds, and hotels and bars are adding jazz to their schedules.

But every week, a semi-secret event at the tony Los Angeles Athletic Club lets anyone experience a near-private concert from legends such as Rickey Woodard, who played saxophone for Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn and others; and Nolan Shaheed, trumpeter for Duke Ellington, Marvin Gaye and more.

That’s before you get to the evening’s singer, who might be 96-year-old pianist Betty Bryant, former Raelette Val Monroe or singer and Grammy-winning songwriter John Proulx.

Until recently, the Sunday night Jazz Salon was free. Now it charges a nominal $10 per person, which is still an outrageous bargain, so be sure to add something to the tip jar on the piano, and maybe try one of the cocktails or the steak frites.

Inside the club 

Walking into the club earlier, you see black-and-white photos of all types of healthy pursuits on the walls, as well as trophies and mementos of the club’s nearly century-and-a-half history. Plush sofas, high ceilings and book-filled shelves are the order of the day, and alongside members in gym gear or lugging laptops, you go up in one of the elevators to the third floor, where the Jazz Salon takes place.

Dave Ross, bassist and founder of the Jazz Salon.

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The bassist who built it 

Earlier in the day, Dave Ross, 76, was setting up the amps, drum kit, mixer and mic stands. He also administers the website, acts as MC and plays double bass as part of the ensemble. He began the venture over a decade ago, when he persuaded the LAAC, of which he had long been a member, to host concerts in their redecorated restaurant and bar.

Ross draws from a repertory group of about 15 artists, and the concert takes place opposite the bar in a wood-paneled room of just a few dozen leather chairs and tables. This small scale makes the night intimate and unique.

“No gig is ever the same,” says Ross. “We don’t rehearse, and every time we play a song, we're never trying to play it the same way we played it before.”

That makes the night fun, too. Since you’re right near the musicians, you can hear their laughter and banter, as well as their impressive solos. Ross, stage left, stays out of the limelight — which is how he prefers it — and often says he's just happy to be there playing.

“You're there to keep the beat, the pulse of the music,” he says. “And then, secondarily, the notes that you play help the other musicians understand what the chord, what the harmony is. I'm just doing it for the pleasure of playing the music.”

The Jazz Salon is a $10 Sunday night concert at the Los Angeles Athletic Club.

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Why $10 barely covers it 

Once a month, Ross and some of his stable join a touring artist — recently five-time Grammy-nominee Karrin Allyson — in the club’s 250-seat ballroom for a more formal ticketed event, but there have been just two complete sellouts of them this year: tributes to Bill Evans and Dave Brubeck/Paul Desmond.

Donations and the tip jar on Sunday evenings sometimes haven’t been enough to break even, either, which led to Ross reluctantly introducing the $10 charge. No matter what, he is determined the Jazz Salon will keep going.

“When I was younger, there was a receptionist I knew who was a nun. She said: “‘You know what your problem is? You’re too optimistic!’”

Daniel Shemtob has been going around Los Angeles asking strangers this question: "What's your mom's best dish?"

He then turns their answers — from Filipino oxtail adobo to the Ashkenazi Jewish favorite of gefilte fish — into a taco for his new five-episode web series, "Better Than Your Mom."

One episode breaks from the format entirely: a head-to-head chopped salad taco challenge between Shemtob and Vanessa Silverton, daughter of famed L.A. chef Nancy Silverton, judged blind by Nancy herself.

Daniel Shemtob, founder of The Lime Truck and creator and host of Better Than Your Mom.

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A two-time winner of "The Great Food Truck Race" on the Food Network, Shemtob is no stranger to reality TV — he also founded The Lime Truck, serving Cali-Mex cuisine in Orange County.

What starts as a quick, chaotic street-corner challenge opens into something bigger — a Long Beach woman honoring her late mother-in-law's gefilte fish recipe, and a chef processing his own mother's death and the loss of his home in the 2025 Palisades Fire.

A dish for his mother

Despite loving fine dining, Shemtob said nothing beats the experience of having someone invite him to their mother's home for dinner.

"It's by far my favorite thing," he said.

Gundry watched as Shemtob reworked her mother-in-law's recipe in real time — a process that normally takes her more than two hours, done in 20 minutes.

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That urge to connect with other people also came from wanting to celebrate his late mother's legacy and the impact she had on him in the kitchen.

"Eating was like a big part of how we shared and celebrated," Shemtob said. "It was a culture that was built around food."

A stranger says, 'yes'

While most walk past him or decline to talk, Shemtob said he's been surprised by how many strangers say yes almost immediately — like Anne Gundry, a retired biology teacher in Long Beach.

She answered with a dish from her mother-in-law from her first marriage — gefilte fish served cold.

Shemtob's take on Dena Levenstein's gefilte fish, reimagined as a taco with an apple-horseradish slaw.

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Gundry recalled her first meeting with Dena Levenstein, who would become her mother-in-law. The relationship started out cold — but cooking together changed their dynamic.

"That's where I honestly think we had the deepest bond with her," Gundry said.

Gundry described yearly visits to Levenstein's house as a cooking "apprenticeship," where Gundry was taught to cook by feel — adding ingredients by the handful, testing a dish's consistency by touch.

"She used to say, 'How does it feel?'" Gundry recalled. "And I'd say, 'I don't know, I don't know how it's supposed to feel.'"

Over the years, she learned. Now, Gundry teaches her own children that recipe the same way — without referring to what's written down.

Watching Shemtob cook on "Better Than Your Mom," Gundry was skeptical. Her own process takes over two hours; his took 20 minutes — until she tasted the apple-horseradish slaw he added.

"Brilliant," she said. "I've been trying to duplicate it at home."

You can find Shemtob's videos on his YouTube channel.

Next week Phoebe Bridgers fans in Southern California will get an otherworldly way to enjoy her new album ahead of its official release Friday.

And a Costa Mesa institution will enjoy the chance to introduce indie music lovers to what it does beyond astronomy lectures and field trips.

The Orange Coast College Planetarium is one of dozens of planetariums around the world – and the only in Southern California – hosting listening sessions next week for Lost Weekend, one of the year’s most anticipated indie releases and Bridgers’ first solo studio album in six years.

The Pasadena native is not expected at any of the planetarium shows. But that doesn’t matter to her fan base.

Phoebe Bridger fans can listen to her album in the planetarium's 125-seat dome theater.

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Twelve shows in the 125-seat theater sold out within four hours of going on sale Thursday, according to the planetarium. So staff added 16 more, bringing the total to 28 screenings over four days, Aug. 10 through 13. (At last check, tickets for showings earlier in the day were still available.)

“We have never had an event that was this anticipated,” Rhiannon Graffio, lead speaker and educator at the planetarium.

There’s two ways to experience the record from start to finish, which is a little over 50 minutes long.

One is a full-dome show featuring images taken by renowned astrophotographer Babak Tafreshi.

“It's gorgeous,” Graffio said. “There's some that are of the night sky, where you can see the paths of the stars as the Earth rotates, or auroras or lightning.”

The other option is a laser show created by Laser Fantasy, with scenes and storylines moving in time with the music.

Graffio said the planetarium had been approached by Bridgers’ label Dead Oceans to host the shows, which are being presented in partnership with Spotify.

Rhiannon Graffio, a lead speaker at the Orange Coast College Planetarium, has been working with Phoebe Bridgers' label on next week's listening sessions.

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Courtesy Rhiannon Graffio

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The events are strictly phone-free. To prevent album leaks, attendees will have to put their phones in pouches provided by Yondr, a company that works concerts and other events. Smartwatches, and Meta glasses also aren’t allowed.

The Lost Weekend events are the most high-profile but certainly not the planetarium’s first experiment with mixing music and visuals.

The theater regularly hosts laser shows set to music, cycling through different artists like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé each month while keeping some crowd favorites like Pink Floyd in rotation. Graffio said in the last year KPop Demon Hunters laser shows have been especially popular.

Accommodating the Lost Weekend shows has meant bringing extra staff to handle the weekday crowds at the community planetarium.

But Graffio said there's a big upside to introducing music fans to a place they may never have thought to visit.

“It’s a wonderful experience,” she said. “And most of the shows that we do are also educational in some sense. As cool as the visuals are, they are about the universe and what we know about it.”

And for those who can't make it to the planetarium shows, there's a more traditional route to marking Bridgers' new album. A dozen record stores around Southern California are hosting listening sessions at midnight Friday.