Special Report

Burglary Cases in Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA Fell in 2020

Samuel Stebbins

Published: May 20, 2022 12:46 pm

Last Updated: May 20, 2022 2:16 pm

Burglary – defined as the unlawful entry of a structure, such as a home or business, to commit a theft or felony – is the most serious nonviolent offense tracked by the FBI. There were just over 1 million burglaries reported in the United States in 2020, resulting in billions of dollars in stolen property.

Most burglaries in the U.S. are committed in residential properties, and more often during the day than at night. Not only do victims of burglaries typically suffer material loss, but they can also be impacted psychologically. Many burglary victims have reported heightened anxiety, difficulty sleeping, feelings of vulnerability, and even post-traumatic stress disorder in some cases.

Encouragingly, burglaries are becoming less common in the United States, with total reported cases dropping by 7% in the most recent year of available data. The decline in the burglary rates nationwide is being driven by steep declines in burglary rates in some major metropolitan areas.

In the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario metro area, located in California, the total number of burglaries fell by 15.4% – from 20,268 in 2019 to 17,140 in 2020. The resulting decrease in the area’s population-adjusted burglary rate was one of the largest of any U.S. metro areas.

The reported burglary rate in Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario declined by about 69 incidents for every 100,000 people from 2019 to 2020. Despite the decrease, the metro area’s burglary rate of 369 reported incidents per 100,000 people is higher than the national rate of 314 burglaries per 100,000 people.

All crime data used in this story is from the FBI’s 2019 and 2020 Uniform Crime Reports. We considered all U.S. metropolitan areas for which the boundaries defined by the FBI match the boundaries as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau.