According to the FBI, burglary rates have been on the decline in recent years. Still, the Bureau estimated that over two million burglaries occurred in 2012 alone. [1] That same year, there were about 121 million households in the United States, [2] which would mean that each of them had roughly a 1-in-36 chance of being burglarized.[3]
Of course, those statistics are for the country as a whole, and burglary rates vary widely from city to city. Looking at statistics for ten randomly-selected large cities from the FBI's 2012 Uniform Crime Report, we can see just how much your hometown can influence your odds of suffering a burglary:
- New York City: 224.8 burglaries per 100,000 residents
- Lincoln, NE: 611.7
- Raleigh, NC: 721.8
- Pittsburgh, PA: 812.0
- Denver, CO: 816.0
- New Orleans, LA: 943.3
- Houston, TX: 1223.1
- Minneapolis, MN: 1225.4
- Oakland, CA: 1544.0
- Cleveland, OH: 2473.5 [4]
Luckily, the FBI makes their crime data available online to anyone who wants to see it, so you should be able to find the burglary rate in your area with just a few minutes' worth of searching.
