MICHIGAN (WJMN) – 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 Michigan, 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.
To clarify, we looked at metropolitan counties in Michigan. 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 Michigan metropolitan county ranked from those with the highest number of burglaries/break-ins to the lowest number throughout 2021, the most recent year of compiled data:
- Kent – 397
- Ottawa – 360
- Kalamazoo – 295
- Washtenaw – 248
- Berrien – 125
- Calhoun – 120
- Macomb – 101
- St. Clair – 89
- Ingham – 88
- Eaton – 79
- Cass – 75
- Livingston – 66
- Jackson – 61
- Bay – 59
- Midland – 51
- Montcalm – 38 (tie)
- Lapeer – 38 (tie)
- Genesee – 35
- Saginaw – 31
- Shiawassee – 28
- Clinton – 18
- Muskegon – 6
- Oakland – 5
According to that data, the Michigan metropolitan county with the most burglaries or break-ins is Kent County, with 397 reports of burglaries in 2021. Census data from 2021 shows Kent County had a population of 658,046 people, meaning nearly one burglary took place for every 1,000 residents that year.
Additionally, Kent County data shows most burglaries in the county took place during the daytime at a residential location, with thieves collecting an average of $2,639. The data also indicates thieves preferred stealing motor vehicles in Kent County more than any other type of property.
According to the data set, reports of burglaries jumped significantly in Kent County in 2021. In 2020, 326 total burglaries were reported — nearly the same number of reported burglaries as 2019, when 327 total incidents were reported. In 2018, when the county saw a total of 354 burglaries.
Overall, burglaries had dropped significantly in Kent County between 2011-2021, although they appear to be rising slightly between 2020-2021.
Kent County is home to Grand Rapids, Michigan, which is located on the Grand River, east of Lake Michigan.
