WISCONSIN (WFRV) – 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 Wisconsin, we dug into the federal statistics.
FBI data from 2021 shows how many recorded burglaries or breaking & 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 Wisconsin. 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 Wisconsin metropolitan county ranked from those with the highest number of burglaries/breaking & enters to the lowest number over the 2021 year, the most recent year of compiled data:
- Winnebago – 149
- Brown – 127
- Dane – 98
- Sheboygan – 75
- Eau Claire – 71
- Kenosha – 70
- Douglas – 65
- Outagamie – 62
- Chippewa – 51
- La Crosse – 48
- Rock – 47
- Marathon – 45 (tie)
- Oconto – 45 (tie)
- Lincoln – 41
- St. Croix – 37
- Pierce – 35
- Waukesha – 27 (tie)
- Columbia – 27 (tie)
- Fond du Lac – 25
- Racine – 22
- Green – 14
- Kewaunee – 13
- Calumet – 11
- Iowa – 7
According to that data, the Wisconsin metropolitan county with the most burglaries or break-ins is Winnebago County with 149 reports of burglaries in 2021. Census data from 2021 shows Winnebago County had a population of 171,623 people, meaning for every 1,000 people, nearly one burglary took place in 2021.
Additionally, Winnebago County data shows most burglaries in the county took place during the evening at a nonresidential location. That data also indicates thieves stole miscellaneous items more than any other type of property.
According to the data set, Winnebago County saw slightly more burglaries reported in 2021 than in the previous year, which was a total of 143 burglaries in 2020. In 2019, the county saw a total of just 60 burglary incidents, and in 2018, a total of 35 burglaries were recorded. This would indicate within the last couple of years, burglaries have been steadily rising in Winnebago County.
Winnebago County is home to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, which is located on the shore of Lake Winnebago.
