Albuquerque tops car theft capitals of the United States

(January 18, 2020) According to data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Report, nearly 750,000 cars were stolen in the United States in 2018. Not surprisingly, car theft comes with a hefty financial cost for victims. The FBI reports that the average value of a stolen car in 2018 was $8,407, indicating that new and expensive cars are not the only vehicles at risk of theft.

While car theft may seem like a problem usually faced by populous cities with many drivers, there is almost no relationship between city size and the likelihood of having a car stolen. For example, cities such as Los Angeles and Miami have some of the highest total numbers of stolen vehicles, but their large populations cause car thefts per capita to be relatively low.

Instead, car thefts per capita tend to be highest in cities with high overall crime rates, especially high rates of violent crime such as murder and manslaughter. Nationwide, car theft is the fourth most common crime (after burglary and aggravated assault), representing 8.9 percent of all crimes. For comparison, the most common crime is larceny-theft, which makes up about 62 percent of all crimes, and the least common crimes are murder and manslaughter, at 0.2 percent.

The latest FBI Uniform Crime Report shows Albuquerque, N.M., at the top of the list; Oakland, Calif., second, and Portland, Ore., third.


Interestingly, cities can experience a significant rise or fall in car thefts over a short period of time, even as short as three years. By contrast, changes in violent crime rates happen on a much smaller scale within the same time frame.

This suggests that car theft is more easily impacted by factors such as policy change (e.g. stricter punishments) or changes in the economic environment, while violent crime including robbery and assault are more difficult to uproot.



Not surprisingly, car theft per capita remains high in cities with a large proportion of residents living below the poverty line. Cities that experienced a rise in unemployment in the last three years tended to see a simultaneous increase in car thefts.

At the same time, cities that managed to reduce unemployment also enjoyed a fall in car thefts per capita. Consequently, an effective method to protect Americans’ cars might be to support access to education and training programs, which increase access to jobs and reduce poverty.



Given the recent uptick in the national car theft rate, analysts at 360 Quote wanted to find which cities have the most vehicle thefts and what factors might be relevant when tackling this issue. The researchers used data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Report as well as the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey for the analysis. Cities were ordered by their respective car theft rates per 100k residents.

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