Burglary cases in Sebring-Avon Park, FL drop in 2020 | Florida

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

Most burglaries in the United States are committed on residential properties, and more often during the day than at night. Not only do victims of burglaries usually suffer material losses, but they can also be psychologically impacted. Many burglary victims have reported increased 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 the total number of reported cases dropping by 7% in the last year of available data. The drop in burglary rates nationwide is due to a sharp drop in burglary rates in some major metropolitan areas.

In Florida’s Sebring-Avon Park metropolitan area, the total number of burglaries fell 39.0%, from 546 in 2019 to 333 in 2020. The resulting decrease in the population-adjusted burglary rate of the region was one of the largest of all US metropolitan areas.

The rate of reported burglaries in Sebring-Avon Park has decreased by approximately 205 incidents per 100,000 people from 2019 to 2020. Partly due to the decrease, the metro area’s burglary rate of 312 reported incidents per 100,000 people is slightly lower than the national rate of 314 burglaries per 100,000 population.

All crime data used in this story comes from the FBI’s 2019 and 2020 Uniform Crime Reports. We considered all US metropolitan areas for which the boundaries defined by the FBI correspond to the boundaries defined by the US Census Bureau.