In 2023, around 3,640.56 violent crimes per 100,000 residents were reported in Oakland, California. This made Oakland the most dangerous city in the United States in that year. Four categories of violent crimes were used: murder and non-negligent manslaughter; forcible rape; robbery; and aggravated assault. Only cities with a population of at least 200,000 were considered.

In 1980, the National Institute of Justice awarded a grant to the Cornell University College of Human Ecology for the establishment of the Center for the Study of Race, Crime, and Social Policy in Oakland, California. This center mounted a long-term research project that sought to explain the wide variation in crime statistics by race and ethnicity. Using information from eight ethnic communities in Oakland, California, representing working- and middle-class Black, White, Chinese, and Hispanic groups, as well as additional data from Oakland's justice systems and local organizations, the center conducted empirical research to describe the criminalization process and to explore the relationship between race and crime. The differences in observed patterns and levels of crime were analyzed in terms of: (1) the abilities of local ethnic communities to contribute to, resist, neutralize, or otherwise affect the criminalization of its members, (2) the impacts of criminal justice policies on ethnic communities and their members, and (3) the cumulative impacts of criminal justice agency decisions on the processing of individuals in the system. Administrative records data were gathered from two sources, the Alameda County Criminal Oriented Records Production System (CORPUS) (Part 1) and the Oakland District Attorney Legal Information System (DALITE) (Part 2). In addition to collecting administrative data, the researchers also surveyed residents (Part 3), police officers (Part 4), and public defenders and district attorneys (Part 5). The eight study areas included a middle- and low-income pair of census tracts for each of the four racial/ethnic groups: white, Black, Hispanic, and Asian. Part 1, Criminal Oriented Records Production System (CORPUS) Data, contains information on offenders' most serious felony and misdemeanor arrests, dispositions, offense codes, bail arrangements, fines, jail terms, and pleas for both current and prior arrests in Alameda County. Demographic variables include age, sex, race, and marital status. Variables in Part 2, District Attorney Legal Information System (DALITE) Data, include current and prior charges, days from offense to charge, disposition, and arrest, plea agreement conditions, final results from both municipal court and superior court, sentence outcomes, date and outcome of arraignment, disposition, and sentence, number and type of enhancements, numbers of convictions, mistrials, acquittals, insanity pleas, and dismissals, and factors that determined the prison term. For Part 3, Oakland Community Crime Survey Data, researchers interviewed 1,930 Oakland residents from eight communities. Information was gathered from community residents on the quality of schools, shopping, and transportation in their neighborhoods, the neighborhood's racial composition, neighborhood problems, such as noise, abandoned buildings, and drugs, level of crime in the neighborhood, chances of being victimized, how respondents would describe certain types of criminals in terms of age, race, education, and work history, community involvement, crime prevention measures, the performance of the police, judges, and attorneys, victimization experiences, and fear of certain types of crimes. Demographic variables include age, sex, race, and family status. For Part 4, Oakland Police Department Survey Data, Oakland County police officers were asked about why they joined the police force, how they perceived their role, aspects of a good and a bad police officer, why they believed crime was down, and how they would describe certain beats in terms of drug availability, crime rates, socioeconomic status, number of juveniles, potential for violence, residential versus commercial, and degree of danger. Officers were also asked about problems particular neighborhoods were experiencing, strategies for reducing crime, difficulties in doing police work well, and work conditions. Demographic variables include age, sex, race, marital status, level of education, and years on the force. In Part 5, Public Defender/District Attorney Survey Data, public defenders and district attorneys were queried regarding which offenses were increasing most rapidly in Oakland, and they were asked to rank certain offenses in terms of seriousness. Respondents were also asked about the public's influence on criminal justice agencies and on the performance of certain criminal justice agencies. Respondents were presented with a list of crimes and asked how typical these offenses were and what factors influenced their decisions about such cases (e.g., intent, motive, evidence, behavior, prior history, injury or loss, substance abuse, emotional trauma). Other variables measured how often and under what circumstances the public defender and client and the public defender and the district attorney agreed on the case, defendant characteristics in terms of who should not be put on the stand, the effects of Proposition 8, public defender and district attorney plea guidelines, attorney discretion, and advantageous and disadvantageous characteristics of a defendant. Demographic variables include age, sex, race, marital status, religion, years of experience, and area of responsibility.

Content

More details about each file are in the individual file descriptions.

Context

This is a dataset hosted by the city of Oakland in California. The organization has an open data platform found here and they update their information according to the amount of data that is brought in. Explore Oakland's Data using Kaggle and all of the data sources available through the city of Oakland organization page!

• Update Frequency: This dataset is updated daily.

Acknowledgements

This dataset is maintained using Socrata's API and Kaggle's API. Socrata has assisted countless organizations with hosting their open data and has been an integral part of the process of bringing more data to the public.

This dataset is distributed under the following licenses: Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and License, NA

These data were collected in Oakland, California, and Birmingham, Alabama, to examine the effectiveness of alternative drug enforcement strategies. A further objective was to compare the relative effectiveness of strategies drawn from professional- versus community-oriented models of policing. The professional model emphasizes police responsibility for crime control, whereas the community model stresses the importance of a police-citizen partnership in crime control. At each site, experimental treatments were applied to selected police beats. The Oakland Police Department implemented a high-visibility enforcement effort consisting of undercover buy-bust operations, aggressive patrols, and motor vehicle stops, while the Birmingham Police Department engaged in somewhat less visible buy-busts and sting operations. Both departments attempted a community-oriented approach involving door-to-door contacts with residents. In Oakland, four beats were studied: one beat used a special drug enforcement unit, another used a door-to-door community policing strategy, a third used a combination of these approaches, and the fourth beat served as a control group. In Birmingham, three beats were chosen: Drug enforcement was conducted by the narcotics unit in one beat, door-to-door policing, as in Oakland, was used in another beat, and a police substation was established in the third beat. To evaluate the effectiveness of these alternative strategies, data were collected from three sources. First, a panel survey was administered in two waves on a pre-test/post-test basis. The panel survey data addressed the ways in which citizens' perceptions of drug activity, crime problems, neighborhood safety, and police service were affected by the various policing strategies. Second, structured observations of police and citizen encounters were made in Oakland during the periods the treatments were in effect. Observers trained by the researchers recorded information regarding the roles and behaviors of police and citizens as well as police compliance with the experiment's procedures. And third, to assess the impact of the alternative strategies on crime rates, reported crime data were collected for time periods before and during the experimental treatment periods, both in the targeted beats and city-wide.

FBI National Incident-Based Reporting System (FBI NIBRS) crime data for Highway Patrol: Oakland Area Office (State Police) in California, including incidents, statistics, demographics, and detailed incident information.

FBI National Incident-Based Reporting System (FBI NIBRS) crime data for San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), including incidents, statistics, demographics, and agency information across multiple jurisdictions.