INDIANA (WANE) – Whether you’re looking to move to a new neighborhood or simply planning a vacation, it’s important to have a sense of how safe you and your stuff are.
To get a better sense of how common burglaries are in Indiana, we dug into the federal statistics.
FBI data from 2021 shows how many recorded burglaries or breaking-and-entering reports took place in a given county. The FBI’s crime data explorer allows users to search crime statistics based on the location, agency type, state, year, and type of crime. For this story, we will be focusing on recorded burglaries in a given county.
The data comes from law enforcement agencies submitting 12 months of complete property/circumstance data. From there, the FBI computes value-lost totals for the crimes of robbery, burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft, based on that supplemental data from law enforcement.
Before seeing the entire ranking of 21 counties, Allen County was ranked high on the list. As it ranked #4 with just under 100 burglaries in 2021. Listing between Tippecanoe with 90 and La Porte with 122. However, Allen County is #1 in burglaries in Northeast Indiana.
To clarify, we looked at metropolitan counties in Indiana. According to the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, counties are counted as metropolitan if they “contain an urbanized area of 50,000 or more population, or are adjacent to such a county and linked to it based on a high degree of social and economic integration with the core as measured by commuting ties.”
Below is a list of every Indiana metropolitan county ranked from those with the highest number of burglaries/break-ins to the lowest number in 2021, the most recent year of compiled data:
- Vigo – 387
- St. Joseph – 207
- La Porte – 122
- Allen – 96
- Tippecanoe – 90
- Clark – 58 (tie)
- Vanderburgh – 58 (tie)
- Delaware – 48
- Hendricks – 46
- Monroe – 43
- Madison – 41
- Harrison – 40
- Hancock – 39
- Floyd – 37
- Porter – 30
- Bartholomew – 28
- Hamilton – 24
- Washington – 18
- Elkhart – 17
- Howard – 15
- Posey – 12
According to the data, the Indiana metropolitan county with the most burglaries or break-ins is Vigo County, with 387 reports of burglaries in 2021. Census data from 2021 shows Vigo County had a population of 105,994 people, meaning nearly four burglaries for every 1,000 people.
Additionally, Vigo County data shows most burglaries in the county took place during the daytime at a nonresidence location, with thieves collecting an average of $1,953 in 2021. That data also indicates that thieves preferred stealing motor vehicles in Vigo County, more than any other type of property.
According to the data set, reports of burglaries have generally risen in Vigo County over the last several years. The county saw more burglaries reported in 2021 than in 2020, when a total of 254 burglaries were reported. In 2019, the county saw even fewer reported burglaries with a total of 191 incidents, but less than in 2018, when the county saw a total of 319 burglaries.
Vigo County is home to Terre Haute, Indiana, which is just east of the Illinois border.
