Violent crime climbed in California and around the country in 2016, the second straight year of increases that have been driven by spikes in big cities like Chicago and have reversed longer-term trends toward safer cities and towns, the FBI reported Monday.

The per capita rate of homicides, robberies, assaults and rapes went up 4.1 percent nationally last year when compared with 2015. Killings alone were up 5.3 percent and reached a level last seen in 2008.

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“The overall picture is that homicide and violent crime rates went up dramatically in the 1970s and ’80s and ’90s, and then underwent a dramatic drop in the last 20 years, and leveled off,” said Robert Weisberg, a Stanford University criminal law professor and co-director of the school’s Criminal Justice Center.

The FBI’s 2016 numbers, he said, “are not inconsistent with that.”

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“The apparent majority of the uptick is due to some really troubled places where the rate is catastrophically high,” Weisberg said.