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What would have to be true
If prosecutors’ decisions were driving crime up, we would expect to see three things. Each can be checked, and each is checked below.
| If the claim were true… | …we would see | Where |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Crime got worse than it otherwise would have. | Austin’s crime rising relative to the nation and to similar places after January 2021, and more so than in nearby areas policed by the same department but prosecuted by someone else. | Sections 1–4 |
| 2. The office prosecutes less. | Fewer cases filed, fewer prison sentences, or longer backlogs than before, and than comparable counties. | Sections 5–6 |
| 3. Repeat offenders drive a growing share of harm. | People arrested many times being released and then committing serious new crimes. Public data on this is thin, so it gets its own page. | @AustinJustice claims |
1. Austin versus the nation
Crime rose almost everywhere in 2020–2022 and then fell. The question is whether Austin did anything different. The chart shows crime per 100,000 residents; shaded bands mark each district attorney’s term.
Average by district attorney’s term
Average yearly rate per 100,000 residents during each term. (FBI figures begin in 2010, so the first term is 2010–2016.)
2. How big is the gap, and how sure are we?
The honest answer is “it depends how you measure,” so here are several reasonable ways. Each bar asks the same question: how much did Austin’s rate change relative to the nation’s between the Moore years (2017–2020) and the Garza years (2021–2025)? A positive number means Austin did worse than the national trend.
Percent change in Austin’s rate relative to the comparison. Positive = Austin worse than the comparison.
Even a clean “Austin did worse than the nation” result would describe everything that was different about Austin after 2020, not only prosecutors. Policing levels, city and county policy, and Austin’s growth and housing market all changed in the same years, and some of those changes began before January 2021. Sections 3 and 4 offer sharper tests.
3. Austin versus a “synthetic Austin” built from 64 cities
A sharper version of the national comparison: build a weighted blend of other large-city police departments whose crime moved like Austin’s from 2010 through 2020, then see whether Austin pulled away from that blend after January 2021. Then run the same test on every other city as a “placebo,” to see how unusual Austin’s gap is.
Austin and its synthetic twin
Indexed so each line’s 2010–2020 average = 100.
Austin’s gap vs. every other city’s
Gap from each city’s own synthetic twin. Grey lines are the other cities run as placebos.
4. Same city, same police, different prosecutors
About 3% of Austin’s reported crime occurs in the part of the city that lies in Williamson County (mostly north Austin), where a different district attorney handles cases. Those areas are policed by the same Austin Police Department and sit under the same city government, but not under Travis County’s prosecutor. If Travis County’s prosecution policies were driving crime up, crime in the Travis part of Austin should have risen more than in the Williamson part after 2021.
Reported incidents per year, indexed so the 2017–2020 average of each area equals 100.
5. What happens to felony cases
The Texas Office of Court Administration publishes how every felony case in each county’s district courts ends: convicted, placed on deferred adjudication, acquitted, or dismissed. This is the best public gauge of what prosecutors do with the cases that reach court. Fiscal years run September to August, so “FY2021” starts in September 2020.
Share of disposed (finished) felony cases that ended in dismissal, Travis County vs. other large Texas counties. The dashed line marks when José Garza took office.
Travis’s figures come from OCA’s Court Activity Reporting and Directory (CARD). FY2026 is September 2025 through August 2026 and may be revised.
These are court-recorded dismissals of cases that were already filed. A case is commonly dismissed because the defendant pleaded guilty in another case, because a witness could not be found, because the evidence fell short, or because a filing deadline was missed. They also rise when older backlogged cases are cleared. This data cannot say which of those reasons applies. Cases the DA’s office declined before filing (“rejections”) are not included at all.
New felony cases filed
Indexed, fiscal 2019 = 100. Courts slowed everywhere in 2020–21 because of COVID-19.
Share of sentences that were prison
Of felony sentences imposed (prison, state jail, local jail, probation).
6. Who is in the county jail?
If dangerous people were being released en masse, you might expect fewer people held awaiting trial. The Texas Commission on Jail Standards publishes monthly jail counts by county, including felony defendants held before trial.
Felony defendants held awaiting trial, per 100,000 county residents
First-of-month counts from county jails, Travis County vs. other large Texas counties.
7. The police side: how often are serious cases solved?
What happens after a crime also depends on whether police identify and arrest someone. Clearance (an arrest or equivalent) is a police measure, so a dip here is not something a prosecutor controls.
Share of violent incidents cleared, by year
Austin Police Department, all four violent categories combined.
Recent years have had less time to clear. “Cleared” includes arrest and exceptional clearance (for example, the suspect has died).
8. What reporters and researchers have found
Several local newsrooms have analyzed the same court records. These are their published findings, not ours; we have not re-run them, and they use different definitions than the charts above. Note the disagreement about how to count.
Two further reports are listed for completeness. The Vera Institute’s report on case backlogs (Aug 2026) says the pre-indictment backlog fell 64% between April 2024 and December 2025 and that index crime fell 10% from 2018 to 2025; Vera worked in partnership with the DA’s office and used its data, and the findings are descriptive, not causal. The Texas Public Policy Foundation / Right on Crime piece, “Going Rogue” (July 2026), is advocacy that correlates Austin crime trends with the DA’s policies.
9. Other things that changed at the same time
Anything that differs between Austin and the nation after 2020 could come from these as well as from prosecution. Each is sourced.