California commercial burglary statistics for 2025 show that a business, not a home, was the target in 68,153 of the state’s 109,596 burglaries — a 62.2 percent commercial share. That figure comes from the California Department of Justice’s Crimes and Clearances collection, the same source behind Guardian National Security’s county-level reports for Los Angeles, the Inland Empire, Orange County, San Diego, Ventura, Kern and Santa Barbara counties. This page presents the statewide picture those seven reports were built against, and compares all seven directly.
Isaac Roberts, Security Specialist, Guardian National Security (PPO #120268)
This 2026 report covers 2025 data — the most recent complete official year available from the California Department of Justice — against U.S. Census Bureau Vintage 2025 population estimates. No page-refresh date is claimed beyond that; treat every figure as tied to the 2025 reporting year, not to today’s date.
California Commercial Burglary Statistics at a Glance
- 109,596 burglaries were reported statewide in 2025 — a rate of 278.5 per 100,000 residents (U.S. Census Bureau, Vintage 2025).
- 68,153 of them — 62.2 percent — targeted a business rather than a home, in line with the 61–63 percent range California has recorded every year since 2021.
- 54.1 percent of all California burglaries involved forcible entry, 27.6 percent were unlawful entry without force, and 18.3 percent were attempted rather than completed.
- Among burglaries with a recorded time, 53.4 percent happened at night versus 46.6 percent during the day — though 21.2 percent statewide carry no recorded time, a share that jumped sharply in 2025 (see the caution in the methodology section).
- Only 10.2 percent of California burglaries were cleared by arrest in 2025 — a lower clearance rate than every property crime category except vehicle theft.
- Commercial burglary fell 20.5 percent between 2021 and 2025, outpacing the 17.7 percent drop in property crime overall.
- Among the seven Southern California counties Guardian National Security serves, Orange County runs the highest commercial-burglary share (64.5 percent) and Santa Barbara County the lowest (54.0 percent) — a 10.5-point spread on either side of the statewide average.
Every figure on this page comes from the California Department of Justice’s Crimes and Clearances collection or the U.S. Census Bureau, and every one can be re-derived from the raw files linked in the methodology section.
California Reported 109,596 Burglaries in 2025, and Most Targeted a Business
These California commercial burglary statistics start with the overall burglary count. Law enforcement agencies across California reported 109,596 burglaries to the Department of Justice in 2025, out of 705,925 property offenses statewide — a property crime rate of 1,793.7 per 100,000 residents. Burglary is the smallest of the three major property categories: larceny-theft accounts for 471,841 offenses and motor vehicle theft for 124,488, against burglary’s 109,596.
| Category | Offenses | Share of property crime | Rate per 100,000 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Larceny-theft | 471,841 | 66.8% | 1,198.9 |
| Motor vehicle theft | 124,488 | 17.6% | 316.3 |
| Burglary | 109,596 | 15.5% | 278.5 |
| Total property | 705,925 | 100% | 1,793.7 |
Of those 109,596 burglaries, 68,153 — 62.2 percent — were non-residential, meaning the target was a business, office, warehouse or other commercial structure rather than a home. The remaining 41,443, or 37.8 percent, were residential. A business was more than one-and-a-half times as likely to be the target as a home statewide, a pattern every one of the seven Southern California counties Guardian National Security has measured also shows, though the margin varies county to county (see the comparison table below).
| Structure type | Burglaries | Share of total | Rate per 100,000 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Non-residential (commercial) | 68,153 | 62.2% | 173.2 |
| Residential | 41,443 | 37.8% | 105.3 |
| Total burglary | 109,596 | 100% | 278.5 |
Violent crime is counted separately and is not included in any property figure on this page. Agencies reported 170,397 violent offenses statewide in 2025, of which 78,212 were cleared — a 45.9 percent clearance rate, discussed alongside burglary’s own clearance rate later on this page.
More Than Half of All California Burglaries Involve Forcible Entry
More than half of all California burglaries involve forcible entry, and most of the rest were completed without force rather than merely attempted. Of the 109,596 burglaries reported in 2025, 59,287 — 54.1 percent — involved forcible entry, 30,228 — 27.6 percent — were unlawful entry without force, and 20,081 — 18.3 percent — were attempted burglaries that did not result in entry. The three categories sum exactly to the statewide total.
| Type of entry | Burglaries | Share of all burglaries |
|---|---|---|
| Forcible entry | 59,287 | 54.1% |
| Unlawful entry (no force) | 30,228 | 27.6% |
| Attempted (no entry) | 20,081 | 18.3% |
| Total burglary | 109,596 | 100% |
Looked at another way, among the 89,515 burglaries that were actually completed, 66.2 percent involved force and 33.8 percent did not — meaning roughly one in three completed burglaries statewide happened through an unlocked door, an open window or another point of entry that required no force at all. CA DOJ records entry type as a binary classification and does not describe how any individual forcible entry occurred, so this page does not characterize the method further. The unforced-entry share is the basis for door and window lock verification as a standard duty on a Guardian National Security post order, regardless of whether a site has been forcibly entered before.
California Burglaries Lean Slightly Toward Nighttime, With a Large Unknown Share
California burglaries lean slightly toward nighttime among cases with a recorded time, though a large share statewide carry no recorded time at all. Of the 109,596 burglaries reported in 2025, agencies logged 46,132 as night, 40,177 as day, and left 23,287 — 21.2 percent — unrecorded. Among the 86,309 burglaries with a known time, 53.4 percent happened at night and 46.6 percent during the day.
| Time recorded | Burglaries | Share of all burglaries | Share of those with a time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Night | 46,132 | 42.1% | 53.4% |
| Day | 40,177 | 36.7% | 46.6% |
| Not recorded | 23,287 | 21.2% | — |
This statewide table covers all burglary, not commercial burglary specifically. Unlike the county-level file behind Guardian National Security’s Los Angeles, Inland Empire, Orange County, San Diego, Ventura, Kern and Santa Barbara county pages, the statewide annual summary CA DOJ publishes does not cross-tabulate time of day by structure type, so a commercial-only day/night split cannot be produced at the state level from this dataset. Every one of those seven county pages does report a commercial-specific time-of-day split, ranging from 46.6 percent night in Santa Barbara County to 66.6 percent night in Kern County — see the comparison table below.
The unrecorded share also deserves a caution the source data itself raises: unrecorded-time burglaries rose from 12,467 (10.3 percent) in 2024 to 23,287 (21.2 percent) in 2025, an 86.8 percent jump in one year. CA DOJ’s own 2025 publication notes that not every agency submitted a complete year of data and that 2021–2025 figures combine two different reporting formats during California’s transition to incident-based reporting — a methodology note this page treats as a live caveat on the 2025 time-of-day figures, not a real one-year behavioral shift.
California Clears About One in Ten Burglaries
California clears about one in ten burglaries by arrest — a lower rate than every property crime category except motor vehicle theft. Of the 109,596 burglaries reported in 2025, 11,209 were cleared, a 10.2 percent clearance rate. Motor vehicle theft cleared lower, at 6.6 percent, while larceny-theft cleared higher, at 12.6 percent, and overall property crime cleared at 11.2 percent.
| Offense | Reported | Cleared | Clearance rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Burglary | 109,596 | 11,209 | 10.2% |
| Motor vehicle theft | 124,488 | 8,225 | 6.6% |
| Larceny-theft | 471,841 | 59,390 | 12.6% |
| All property | 705,925 | 78,824 | 11.2% |
| Violent crime | 170,397 | 78,212 | 45.9% |
The dataset does not split clearances into residential and non-residential, so this page does not report a commercial burglary clearance rate — the same limitation every one of the seven county pages in this series discloses. A clearance also describes what happens after a crime, not the odds of it happening in the first place; an 89.8 percent uncleared share is a fact about enforcement outcomes, not a prediction for any individual property.
Commercial Burglary Has Fallen Faster Than the Statewide Property Decline Since 2021
Commercial burglary has fallen faster than the statewide property-crime decline since 2021, even as the pattern of who gets burglarized has stayed roughly constant. Total property crime fell 17.7 percent between 2021 and 2025, from 857,599 to 705,925 offenses. Burglary overall fell 19.6 percent, residential burglary fell 18.1 percent, and commercial burglary fell 20.5 percent — the steepest decline of the three, from 85,696 to 68,153.
| Year | Property | Burglary | Commercial burglary | Residential burglary | Vehicle theft | Violent |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 857,599 | 136,275 | 85,696 | 50,579 | 179,956 | 183,546 |
| 2022 | 902,977 | 143,429 | 90,219 | 53,210 | 181,815 | 193,019 |
| 2023 | 884,862 | 132,583 | 81,979 | 50,604 | 191,248 | 194,537 |
| 2024 | 815,854 | 120,717 | 73,704 | 47,013 | 166,319 | 188,146 |
| 2025 | 705,925 | 109,596 | 68,153 | 41,443 | 124,488 | 170,397 |
| Change | −17.7% | −19.6% | −20.5% | −18.1% | −30.8% | −7.2% |
Vehicle theft fell fastest of any category shown here, down 30.8 percent, while violent crime fell the least, down 7.2 percent — a smaller decline than every property category. The state’s population grew slightly over the same period, from 39,152,927 in 2021 to 39,355,309 in 2025 (U.S. Census Bureau, Vintage 2025), so the property-crime decline is not an artifact of a shrinking denominator; the rate fell even faster than the raw count.
This page does not extend the trend table to attempted-versus-completed burglary or to time-of-day, because CA DOJ’s own reporting notes flag those specific fields as affected by the 2021–2025 transition to incident-based reporting, discussed in the section above and in the methodology notes below.
How the Seven Southern California Counties Compare
The statewide California commercial burglary statistics above mask real county-to-county variation. Guardian National Security has built county-level crime statistics reports for all seven Southern California counties it serves, each drawn from the same CA DOJ Crimes and Clearances collection as this statewide page. Commercial-burglary share varies by more than 10 points across the seven — from Santa Barbara County’s 54.0 percent, the lowest measured, up to Orange County’s 64.5 percent, the highest — with the statewide 62.2 percent figure sitting toward the upper half of that range.
| County | Population | Burglaries | Commercial burglaries | Commercial share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Santa Barbara County | 442,065 | 830 | 448 | 54.0% |
| Ventura County | 830,851 | 1,163 | 654 | 56.2% |
| San Diego County | 3,282,248 | 4,261 | 2,495 | 58.6% |
| Inland Empire (Riverside & San Bernardino) | 4,769,007 | 10,603 | 6,302 | 59.4% |
| Kern County | 927,068 | 3,539 | 2,151 | 60.8% |
| Orange County | 3,149,507 | 5,888 | 3,799 | 64.5% |
| Los Angeles County | 9,694,934 | see note | see note | see note |
| California (statewide) | 39,355,309 | 109,596 | 68,153 | 62.2% |
Los Angeles County’s row is marked “see note” deliberately. Guardian National Security’s Los Angeles property crime statistics page profiles the City of Los Angeles using LAPD’s incident-level NIBRS data, not the county-wide CA DOJ summary file this comparison table uses for the other six rows. Reproducing a county-wide, DOJ-sourced commercial-burglary breakdown for all of Los Angeles County’s roughly 9.7 million residents was not something this session could independently re-derive and verify on demand, so no county-wide commercial-burglary figure for Los Angeles is claimed here. The population figure is shown because it was independently verified against the same U.S. Census Bureau file used for the other six counties.
Every county on this list runs above the point where residential burglary is the majority — commercial burglary is the larger share everywhere Guardian National Security has measured it in Southern California, ranging from Santa Barbara County’s narrow 54-to-46 split up to Orange County’s nearly two-to-one commercial tilt. That pattern maps directly onto the property types Guardian National Security is hired to protect: warehouses and industrial sites, retail centers, and active construction sites, all counted as non-residential structures in this data.
What These California Commercial Burglary Statistics Mean for Property Owners
These California commercial burglary statistics establish three things a business owner or property manager can act on. First, a commercial building is measurably more likely to be burglarized than a home is, statewide and in every Southern California county Guardian National Security has measured — this is not a marketing framing, it is the DOJ’s own reported split. Second, forced entry is common but not universal: 27.6 percent of California burglaries involve no force at all, which makes basic access control — locked doors, secured windows, monitored entry points — a real part of any coverage plan, not just a deterrent against break-ins.
Third, a burglary that does occur is unlikely to be cleared quickly: at a 10.2 percent statewide clearance rate, prevention and deterrence carry more weight than the expectation of a fast arrest.
Guardian National Security serves all seven counties in this comparison — Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, Riverside, San Diego, Ventura, Santa Barbara and Kern — and publishes its rates openly: unarmed guards $25–40 per hour, armed guards $35–65 per hour, and mobile patrol $45–70 per hour, with a price-match guarantee on any comparable licensed quote. Coverage for the property types most exposed in this data — warehouse and industrial sites, retail and shopping centers, and construction sites — is built around the specific entry points and hours a site’s own burglary risk actually follows, not a generic patrol schedule.
Methodology and Source Notes
The California commercial burglary statistics on this page come from the California Department of Justice’s Crime in California 2025 annual publication (Tables 2, 3, 8 and 15), published through OpenJustice in July 2026, and cross-checked against the underlying Crime in California 2025 report (PDF). Population denominators come from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Vintage 2025 county population estimates.
These are UCR summary counts, not NIBRS incident records. California agencies report monthly offense totals under the FBI’s summary Uniform Crime Reporting definitions. That is a different measure from the incident-level NIBRS data some cities publish individually, and the two must never be added together or compared directly — which is why the statewide and county-level figures on this page cannot be set against the Los Angeles property crime statistics, which are built from LAPD’s own NIBRS records for the City of Los Angeles only.
Every headline figure was derived twice, by different routes. The statewide burglary total, the non-residential/residential split, the day/night/unknown split, the forcible/unlawful/attempted split and the clearance rate were each read directly from the Crime in California 2025 report’s own tables, then independently recomputed by summing and cross-adding the same tables’ year-by-year and category-by-category rows (residential plus non-residential burglary equals total burglary in every year 2021–2025; forcible plus unlawful plus attempted equals total burglary; burglary plus vehicle theft plus larceny equals total property crime).
The statewide 2025 totals also match the figures independently published on Guardian National Security’s Kern County and Santa Barbara County crime statistics pages, which cited the same 109,596 burglaries, 68,153 non-residential, 62.2 percent commercial share and 10.2 percent clearance rate from an earlier, separate query of the same CA DOJ source. Population figures were verified by confirming that the sum of all 58 California counties in the Census Bureau’s Vintage 2025 file equals the state’s own published total, and that Riverside and San Bernardino counties’ combined population matches the Inland Empire page’s previously published figure exactly.
Deliberately not claimed on this page:
- A commercial-specific burglary clearance rate. CA DOJ does not publish clearances split by residential and non-residential structure type, statewide or by county.
- A commercial-specific (non-residential) day/night split at the statewide level. That cross-tabulation exists in the county-level file used for the seven county pages in this series, but the statewide annual summary table does not break time of day out by structure type.
- A county-wide, DOJ-sourced commercial-burglary breakdown for Los Angeles County. This session could not independently re-derive and verify that figure from the county-level file; the Los Angeles sibling page instead profiles the City of Los Angeles using LAPD’s own NIBRS data, a different geography and a different dataset.
- Any reduction-in-loss percentage attributable to hiring a security guard. No CA DOJ or Census dataset measures the effect of private security staffing on burglary rates, and any figure claiming a specific percentage reduction would not be traceable to a primary source.
- A stable read on the 2025 attempted-burglary and unrecorded-time-of-day figures as a genuine one-year trend. Both categories moved sharply in 2025 (attempted burglary’s share nearly tripled from 2024), and CA DOJ’s own publication cautions that 2025 combines two reporting formats during an ongoing transition and that some agencies did not submit a full year of data.
Limits of this data. These California commercial burglary statistics are offenses reported to police; unreported crime is not counted. Figures reflect calendar year 2025 as published by CA DOJ in July 2026 and are not updated in real time. County-level detail beyond the totals shown in the comparison table — jurisdiction breakdowns, forcible-entry shares, day/night splits by county — is published on each county’s own page linked above, not repeated here.
California Commercial Burglary Statistics: Frequently Asked Questions
How many commercial burglaries were there in California in 2025?
California commercial burglary statistics for 2025 show 68,153 commercial (non-residential) burglaries, according to the California Department of Justice, out of 109,596 burglaries statewide. That works out to a rate of roughly 173 commercial burglaries per 100,000 residents, using U.S. Census Bureau Vintage 2025 population estimates.
Commercial burglaries made up 62.2 percent of all California burglaries that year, a share that has stayed in the 61 to 63 percent range every year since 2021. The figure covers every reporting law enforcement agency in the state, not a sample.
Are businesses or homes burglarized more often in California?
Businesses are burglarized more often than homes in California, based on the Department of Justice’s 2025 data. Of the state’s 109,596 burglaries that year, 68,153 — 62.2 percent — targeted a commercial structure, while 41,443, or 37.8 percent, targeted a residence.
Every one of the seven Southern California counties in this series shows the same commercial lean, though the share ranges from 54.0 percent in Santa Barbara County up to 64.5 percent in Orange County. No county in this series reports a majority-residential burglary pattern.
What percentage of California burglaries involve forced entry?
54.1 percent of California burglaries involved forcible entry in 2025, according to the California Department of Justice. Another 27.6 percent were unlawful entry without force — an unlocked door or open window, for example — and the remaining 18.3 percent were attempted burglaries that did not result in entry at all.
Among burglaries that were actually completed, 66.2 percent involved force and 33.8 percent did not, meaning roughly one in three completed burglaries required no forced entry whatsoever. CA DOJ records entry type as a binary classification and does not detail the specific method used.
Do most California commercial burglaries happen at night?
Most California burglaries with a recorded time happen at night, though the margin is narrower than many assume. Of the burglaries with a known time in 2025, 53.4 percent occurred at night and 46.6 percent during the day, according to the California Department of Justice.
That statewide figure covers all burglary, not commercial burglary specifically — the state does not publish a structure-type breakdown for time of day. County-level data does exist: the county-specific crime statistics reports in this series show commercial-specific night shares ranging from 46.6 percent in Santa Barbara County to 66.6 percent in Kern County.
How many California burglaries are solved?
California cleared 10.2 percent of reported burglaries by arrest in 2025, according to the California Department of Justice — 11,209 clearances out of 109,596 reported burglaries. A clearance means an arrest or an exceptional clearance, not necessarily a conviction.
That rate is lower than larceny-theft’s 12.6 percent and overall property crime’s 11.2 percent, but higher than motor vehicle theft’s 6.6 percent, the lowest clearance rate of any major property category. CA DOJ does not publish clearance rates split by residential versus commercial burglary, so no commercial-specific clearance figure exists for California or for any of its counties.
Is commercial burglary rising or falling in California?
Commercial burglary is falling in California, down 20.5 percent between 2021 and 2025, from 85,696 to 68,153 offenses, according to the California Department of Justice. That decline outpaced the 17.7 percent drop in property crime overall and the 18.1 percent drop in residential burglary over the same five years.
Motor vehicle theft fell faster still, down 30.8 percent, while violent crime declined only 7.2 percent. California’s population grew slightly over the same period, so the decline is not explained by a shrinking population base.
Which Southern California county has the highest commercial burglary rate?
Orange County has the highest commercial-burglary share among the seven Southern California counties Guardian National Security has measured, at 64.5 percent of all burglaries in 2025, according to the California Department of Justice. Santa Barbara County has the lowest, at 54.0 percent.
The statewide figure is 62.2 percent, placing Orange County above the state average and Santa Barbara County below it. Kern County, San Diego County, the Inland Empire and Ventura County all fall between those two extremes. Guardian National Security, a Calabasas-based private patrol operator, holds PPO #120268 and serves all seven counties in this comparison.
How much does it cost to hire security guards to protect a business from burglary in California?
Guardian National Security publishes unarmed guard rates of $25 to $40 per hour, armed guard rates of $35 to $65 per hour, and mobile patrol rates of $45 to $70 per hour across the Southern California counties it serves. A price-match guarantee applies to any comparable licensed quote.
Actual cost depends on the property type, hours of coverage and whether armed or unarmed staffing fits the site’s risk profile — a warehouse with overnight exposure typically needs a different plan than a retail storefront with daytime foot traffic. No published dataset measures a specific burglary-reduction percentage tied to any given staffing level.
