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Arrests in California

Agencies in California reported 692,092 arrests to the FBI in 2025, broken down here by the arrestee’s race, sex and age.

American Factbook Research

Read these figures with these

  • An arrest is an event, not a person. One person arrested three times in a year is three arrests, so these are not counts of individuals and a rate is not the share of a population that was arrested.
  • Race is recorded by the arresting agency, not reported by the person arrested.
  • The FBI publishes no ethnicity field with these arrests, so no Hispanic or Latino figure can be derived from them. Hispanic arrestees are recorded under a race, which is why the population each rate divides by is that race across all origins rather than the non-Hispanic part of it.
  • The FBI’s “Multiple” category is an arresting officer’s classification of one person. The Census Bureau’s “two or more races” is what a person says about themselves. They are not the same population, so that row carries a count and no rate.
  • Reporting to the FBI is voluntary and coverage varies by agency and by year, so a change in an arrest count can be a change in which agencies reported.
  • A rate is not published where fewer than 20 arrests lie behind it. That is the convention US federal vital statistics use for an unreliable rate, and it matters most in the smallest groups: nineteen arrests among a few hundred residents produces a figure that one or two arrests would move by a third. The count is always shown.
  • Comparing the composition of arrestees with the composition of a population assumes equal offending and equal likelihood of arrest across groups. This data supports neither assumption, and nothing here implies either.
  • 344 arrests in 2025 carry no race at all — not even “unknown” — so the race rows total slightly less than the arrests recorded.

By race · 2025

Arrests per 100,000 residents of that group in California, using Census Bureau estimates for the same year. The FBI’s legacy grouping, “Asian, Native Hawaiian, or Other Pacific Islander”, contains two of the rows below and is left out rather than counted twice.

1 more column on a wider screen

Arrests in California by race, 2025
RaceArrestsShare of arrestsPer 100,000
White537,86577.7%2,115
Black or African American106,37415.4%4,195
Asian23,6023.4%342
Unknown16,4972.4%
American Indian or Alaska Native4,5410.7%270
Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander3,2130.5%1,472
Multiple00.0%
Not Specified00.0%

By sex · 2025

532,186
Male
2,741 per 100,000 residents
159,906
Female
802 per 100,000 residents

By age · 2025

Arrests in California by age band and sex, 2025
AgeSexArrestsPer 100,000
Under 10Female5
Under 10Male11
Under 11Female0
Under 11Male0
10-12Female29821
10-12Male63245
11-12Female0
11-12Male0
13-14Female1,684177
13-14Male3,898410
15Female1,472300
15Male4,031822
16Female1,461290
16Male4,861964
17Female1,430272
17Male5,3311,013
18Female2,003380
18Male7,1691,361
19Female2,417484
19Male8,1761,636
20Female2,566500
20Male8,5801,670
21Female3,113603
21Male9,8381,906
22Female3,213623
22Male10,6052,057
23Female3,483652
23Male11,0962,076
24Female3,717643
24Male11,7742,037
25-29Female21,799767
25-29Male69,7222,455
30-34Female26,035901
30-34Male89,9173,111
35-39Female25,457902
35-39Male83,0112,942
40-44Female20,620775
40-44Male67,2992,528
45-49Female14,392594
45-49Male46,5461,922
50-54Female9,146391
50-54Male31,4421,344
55-59Female6,843294
55-59Male25,2231,085
60-64Female4,655203
60-64Male18,143791
65 and overFemale4,09759
65 and overMale14,881216
Juvenile OtherFemale0
Juvenile OtherMale0
Adult OtherFemale0
Adult OtherMale0

Sources

Data retrieved

California elsewhere on the Factbook

  • Reported crimeCrime and justice

    Offenses reported to police by type, the trend, and the reporting coverage.

  • Prison populationCrime and justice

    People held under the state’s correctional authority, and the imprisonment rate. A different publisher counting a different thing.

  • Hate crimeCrime and justice

    Incidents reported to the FBI by bias motivation, as counts — the collection publishes no participation share, so there is no rate to compare states on.

  • Federal obligationsFederal spending

    What federal agencies obligated against a place of performance in the state, per resident and by agency.

  • The California Factbook entryAcross the Factbook

    Every measure the Factbook publishes for this state in one place, each with where it ranks among the others and the record it came from.

The immigration hub has no page for a state: CBP publishes by sector and field office, which are its own areas of responsibility rather than a geography, so assigning them to states would be a claim the data does not make. Immigration and the border.