Kern County crime statistics for 2025 show property crime falling sharply across every category the state tracks, even as violent crime clears at a lower rate than the California average. Law enforcement agencies across Kern County reported 3,539 burglaries to the California Department of Justice in 2025, and 2,151 of them — 60.8 percent — targeted a business rather than a home. Bakersfield, the county’s largest city, reported an even higher commercial share at 66.4 percent.
Last updated 24 August 2026 · 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.
Kern County Crime Statistics at a Glance
- 17,416 property offenses were reported across Kern County in 2025 — a rate of 1,878.6 per 100,000 residents.
- 60.8 percent of burglaries were commercial, not residential — just below California’s statewide share of 62.2 percent, though Bakersfield alone ran higher than both at 66.4 percent.
- Property crime fell 40.4 percent between 2021 and 2025, while violent crime fell only 11.2 percent over the same five years.
- Kern County clears burglary, vehicle theft, larceny and property crime overall above the California average — but clears violent crime below it, at 40.9 percent versus the state’s 45.9 percent.
- Bakersfield accounts for 54.0 percent of all property crime reported in Kern County.
- Shoplifting more than doubled its share of larceny, from 14.2 percent of all larceny in 2021 to 31.4 percent in 2025.
- Population: 927,068 countywide, 422,165 in Bakersfield (U.S. Census Bureau, Vintage 2025).
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.
Kern County Recorded 17,416 Property Offenses in 2025
Kern County recorded 17,416 property offenses in 2025 across all sixteen reporting law enforcement agencies in the county. That breaks into 9,847 larcenies, 3,539 burglaries and 4,030 vehicle thefts. Against a population of 927,068, the property crime rate was 1,878.6 per 100,000 residents — well above the rate reported in Ventura County, a difference this page does not attempt to explain beyond the raw counts.
| Category | Offenses | Share of property crime | Rate per 100,000 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Larceny-theft | 9,847 | 56.5% | 1,062.2 |
| Vehicle theft | 4,030 | 23.1% | 434.7 |
| Burglary | 3,539 | 20.3% | 381.7 |
| Total property | 17,416 | 100% | 1,878.6 |
Violent crime is counted separately and is not included in any property figure on this page. Agencies reported 5,968 violent offenses in the county in 2025, of which 2,439 were cleared.
More Than Six in Ten Kern County Burglaries Target a Business
More than six in ten Kern County burglaries target a business rather than a home. Of the 3,539 burglaries reported across the county in 2025, 2,151 were non-residential and 1,388 were residential — a 60.8 to 39.2 split. That is close to, and marginally below, California’s statewide commercial share.
California as a whole reported 109,596 burglaries in 2025, of which 68,153 — 62.2 percent — were non-residential. Kern County’s commercial share sits 1.4 points below that statewide figure, which still means most burglary risk in the county falls on businesses, not homes — the same below-average pattern reported in the Inland Empire crime statistics, where the commercial share was 59.4 percent in 2025. Orange County runs the opposite direction, with a commercial share of 64.5 percent, above the state average — a reminder that this pattern is not uniform across Southern California.
| Area | Total burglary | Non-residential | Residential | Commercial share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kern County | 3,539 | 2,151 | 1,388 | 60.8% |
| California | 109,596 | 68,153 | 41,443 | 62.2% |
Bakersfield’s Commercial Burglary Share Runs Higher Than the County’s
Bakersfield’s commercial burglary share runs higher than the county’s as a whole. Of the 1,748 burglaries reported inside Bakersfield city limits in 2025, 1,161 were non-residential — 66.4 percent, compared with 60.8 percent countywide and 62.2 percent statewide. As the county’s anchor city, Bakersfield alone accounts for exactly half of every commercial burglary reported in Kern County.
The Kern County Sheriff’s Department, which patrols the unincorporated areas and contract cities outside Bakersfield, reported a lower commercial share at 53.4 percent of its 1,446 burglaries. The gap between Bakersfield and the sheriff-served areas is consistent with a denser commercial core inside city limits, though this page does not claim to know the cause with certainty.
Most Kern County Commercial Burglaries With a Known Time Happen at Night
Most Kern County commercial burglaries with a recorded time happen at night. Of the 2,151 non-residential burglaries in 2025, agencies logged 1,161 as night and 581 as day, leaving 409 with no time recorded. Among the 1,742 that carry a time, 66.6 percent were night burglaries.
The 409 unrecorded cases are 19.0 percent of all commercial burglaries countywide — larger than Ventura County’s 0.9 percent unrecorded share in this series, though smaller than the Inland Empire’s 31.8 percent. The night figure above describes roughly four in five commercial burglaries, not the full total, and this page does not claim to know how the unrecorded cases would split. Bakersfield’s own figures carry no such gap: all 1,161 of its non-residential burglaries have a recorded time, and 742 of them — 63.9 percent — happened at night.
| Time recorded | Burglaries | Share of all commercial | Share of those with a time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Night | 1,161 | 54.0% | 66.6% |
| Day | 581 | 27.0% | 33.4% |
| Not recorded | 409 | 19.0% | — |
Residential burglary splits differently: 501 night against 653 day, with 234 unrecorded — homes are entered somewhat more often during daylight. Businesses are entered mostly after dark on the cases where a time was logged, which is the operational case for overnight coverage at industrial and warehouse sites rather than daytime-only staffing.
Kern County Clears Property Crime Above the State Average, Violent Crime Below It
Kern County clears property crime above the California average in every category measured, while clearing violent crime below it — a pattern that does not run in one direction across the board. Agencies in the county cleared 487 of 3,539 burglaries in 2025 — 13.8 percent, compared with a statewide burglary clearance rate of 10.2 percent.
Vehicle theft cleared at 7.6 percent against California’s 6.6 percent, larceny-theft cleared at 13.4 percent against 12.6 percent statewide, and overall property clearance in the county was 12.1 percent against 11.2 percent. Violent crime is the exception: Kern County cleared 40.9 percent of its 5,968 violent offenses, below California’s 45.9 percent statewide rate.
| Offense | Kern County | California |
|---|---|---|
| Burglary | 13.8% | 10.2% |
| Vehicle theft | 7.6% | 6.6% |
| Larceny-theft | 13.4% | 12.6% |
| All property | 12.1% | 11.2% |
| Violent | 40.9% | 45.9% |
The dataset does not split clearances into residential and non-residential, so this page does not report a commercial burglary clearance rate. That figure is not published and is not estimated here. A higher clearance rate does not mean a lower risk of loss before an arrest happens — it describes what occurs after a crime, not prevention.
Property Crime in Kern County Fell Sharply Since 2021, While Shoplifting Rose
Property crime in Kern County fell 40.4 percent between 2021 and 2025, from 29,208 offenses to 17,416, and every property category measured here moved in the same direction. Burglary fell 35.7 percent, commercial burglary specifically fell 44.0 percent, and vehicle theft fell 54.4 percent over the same five years. Violent crime fell too, but far less — down only 11.2 percent.
Shoplifting moved against the trend, rising 46.1 percent from 2,116 offenses in 2021 to 3,091 in 2025. It now accounts for 31.4 percent of all larceny-theft in the county, more than double its 14.2 percent share in 2021. A countywide headline of “crime is falling” is accurate for property offenses in aggregate and misleading for retail operators specifically.
| Year | Property | Burglary | Commercial burglary | Vehicle theft | Shoplifting | Violent |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 29,208 | 5,507 | 3,839 | 8,843 | 2,116 | 6,718 |
| 2022 | 29,542 | 6,444 | 4,653 | 9,061 | 2,529 | 6,687 |
| 2023 | 24,740 | 5,191 | 3,539 | 8,012 | 3,045 | 7,574 |
| 2024 | 20,052 | 4,289 | 2,786 | 5,751 | 2,514 | 6,274 |
| 2025 | 17,416 | 3,539 | 2,151 | 4,030 | 3,091 | 5,968 |
| Change | −40.4% | −35.7% | −44.0% | −54.4% | +46.1% | −11.2% |
The population base grew over this period, from an estimated 912,765 in 2021 to 927,068 in 2025, so the property-crime decline is not an artifact of a shrinking denominator — the rate fell even faster than the raw count.
Vehicles Are the Target in 6,723 Kern County Offenses
Vehicles were the target in 6,723 Kern County offenses in 2025. That is 4,030 completed vehicle thefts plus 2,693 larcenies that targeted a vehicle without taking it — 1,939 thefts from a vehicle and 754 thefts of vehicle parts or accessories. Vehicle-related larceny alone is 27.3 percent of all larceny in the county.
These are counted under separate offense headings and are added here only because they describe the same target. They are not combined anywhere in the source data, and the 6,723 total is this page’s arithmetic, stated so it can be checked. Kern County is one of California’s largest counties by land area with Bakersfield as its only large city, which is relevant to anyone weighing parking lot coverage or vehicle patrol across a dispersed service area.
Nearly Three-Quarters of Kern County Burglaries Involve Forcible Entry
Nearly three-quarters of Kern County burglaries involve forcible entry. Of the 3,539 burglaries reported across the county in 2025, 2,553 were recorded as forcible entry and 986 as unlawful entry without force. The two categories sum exactly to the burglary total, so every reported burglary falls into one or the other.
At 72.1 percent, Kern County’s forcible-entry share is higher than Ventura County’s 62.5 percent and lower than the Inland Empire’s 74.7 percent, both reported in this series. CA DOJ records this as a binary classification and does not describe how any individual entry occurred, so this page does not characterize the method further. What the category does establish is that a physical barrier was defeated in most Kern County burglaries — the basis for perimeter checks and lock verification as a standard duty on a Guardian National Security post order, alongside the core guard services a site contracts.
Shoplifting and Theft From Vehicles Dominate Kern County Larceny
Shoplifting and an unclassified “all other” category dominate Kern County larceny. Of 9,847 larceny-theft offenses in 2025, shoplifting accounted for 3,091 and theft from a motor vehicle for a further 1,939. The nine published subcategories sum exactly to the larceny total, with no residual or unclassified remainder.
| Subcategory | Offenses | Share of larceny |
|---|---|---|
| Shoplifting | 3,091 | 31.4% |
| All other larceny | 2,988 | 30.3% |
| Theft from a motor vehicle | 1,939 | 19.7% |
| Theft from a building | 775 | 7.9% |
| Motor vehicle parts and accessories | 754 | 7.7% |
| Bicycles | 189 | 1.9% |
| Pocket-picking | 77 | 0.8% |
| Purse-snatching | 27 | 0.3% |
| Coin-operated machines | 7 | 0.1% |
| Total larceny-theft | 9,847 | 100% |
“All other larceny” is CA DOJ’s residual bucket for larceny that does not fit the eight named categories, and the agency does not break it down further, so this page does not speculate about its contents. The three named categories a security program can actually influence — shoplifting, theft from vehicles, and vehicle parts — together account for 5,784 offenses, or 58.7 percent of all Kern County larceny.
Bakersfield Accounts for More Than Half of Kern County’s Property Crime
Bakersfield accounts for more than half of all property crime reported in Kern County. The city recorded 9,400 property offenses in 2025 — 54.0 percent of the countywide total — followed by the Kern County Sheriff’s Department at 5,906 across its unincorporated and contract-city jurisdictions. Together, Bakersfield and the sheriff’s coverage area account for 93.1 percent of countywide property crime, with the county’s next-largest cities reporting only a few hundred offenses each.
Bakersfield’s property crime rate, 2,226.6 per 100,000 residents, also runs well above the countywide rate of 1,878.6. That gap is typical of an anchor city inside a large, mostly rural county rather than a sign that Bakersfield is an outlier by California urban standards — this page does not compare it against other California cities.
| Jurisdiction | Property offenses | Burglary | Commercial burglary | Commercial share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bakersfield | 9,400 | 1,748 | 1,161 | 66.4% |
| Kern Co. Sheriff’s Department | 5,906 | 1,446 | 772 | 53.4% |
| Delano | 345 | 36 | 17 | 47.2% |
| Shafter | 284 | 21 | 8 | 38.1% |
| Wasco | 276 | 22 | 11 | 50.0% |
These are the five largest jurisdictions by property-crime volume, not a ranking of danger — a larger jurisdiction reports more of everything. Bakersfield’s commercial burglary share is the highest of the five; Shafter’s is the lowest, at 38.1 percent, meaning Shafter’s burglary mix skews more residential than the county overall.
What the Kern County Crime Statistics Mean for Property Owners
Three findings in these Kern County crime statistics change how a commercial site should be covered. First, more than six in ten burglaries countywide — and two in three in Bakersfield specifically — target a business, not a home. Second, commercial burglary with a known time skews heavily to night, the same pattern documented in Ventura County, though roughly a fifth of Kern’s commercial burglaries carry no recorded time at all. Third, the county’s above-average property clearance rate is a fact about what happens after a crime, not a substitute for prevention — and it does not extend to violent crime, which clears below the state average here.
That third point is easy to misread. A 13.8 percent burglary clearance rate is genuinely better than California’s 10.2 percent, but it still means roughly six out of seven burglaries close without an arrest. Deterrence and detection at the point of entry remain the only controls a property owner actually governs, which is the argument for on-site presence at retail centers, construction sites and apartment and gated communities during the hours the data says entry occurs.
Guardian National Security covers Kern County, including Bakersfield, and publishes rates openly: unarmed guards $25–40 per hour, armed guards $35–65 per hour, mobile patrol $45–70 per hour, with a price-match guarantee on any comparable licensed quote.
Methodology and Source Notes
The Kern County crime statistics on this page come from the California Department of Justice Crimes and Clearances (including Arson), 1985–2025 file, published July 2026 through OpenJustice. Figures were produced by filtering that file to the sixteen agencies CA DOJ lists under Kern County for 2025, then summing the named columns across all of them.
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, and the two must never be added together or compared directly — which is why the figures here cannot be set against the Los Angeles property crime statistics, which are built from LAPD NIBRS records.
Every figure was derived twice, by different routes. Each headline number was computed from the annual file and then recomputed by summing the monthly rows for 2025 in the separate by-month file. Nineteen tested county-level figures and nine tested Bakersfield-level figures matched exactly. Internal subtotals also reconcile: residential plus non-residential burglary equals total burglary, the nine larceny subcategories sum to larceny-theft, forcible plus unlawful entry equals total burglary, and burglary plus vehicle theft plus larceny equals total property crime.
Raw file: Crimes and Clearances 1985–2025 (CSV). Definitions and reporting rules: CA DOJ context document. Population: U.S. Census Bureau Vintage 2025 county population estimates for the countywide figure, and Vintage 2025 city and town population estimates for the Bakersfield figure.
Limits of this data. These are offenses reported to police; unreported crime is not counted. “Kern County” here means every agency reporting to CA DOJ with a county of Kern, which includes the California Highway Patrol, a school district police department, a university police department and a railroad police jurisdiction alongside city police departments and the sheriff’s department. Clearance rates are not published split by residential and non-residential, so no commercial clearance rate is claimed. Non-residential burglary time-of-day is unrecorded for 19.0 percent of countywide cases — larger than Ventura County’s 0.9 percent and smaller than the Inland Empire’s 31.8 percent in this series — so the night-burglary share describes the cases with a recorded time, not the full total.
Kern County Crime Statistics: Frequently Asked Questions
How much crime is there in Kern County?
Law enforcement agencies in Kern County reported 17,416 property offenses and 5,968 violent offenses in 2025. Against a population of 927,068, that is a property crime rate of 1,878.6 per 100,000 residents. The figures come from the California Department of Justice.
Property crime breaks into 9,847 larcenies, 3,539 burglaries and 4,030 vehicle thefts. All sixteen reporting agencies in the county are included, from Bakersfield police and the sheriff’s department to the California Highway Patrol, a school district police department, a university police department and a railroad police jurisdiction. These are offenses reported to police under FBI summary reporting definitions, so unreported crime is not counted anywhere in the totals.
Are businesses or homes burglarized more often in Kern County?
Businesses are burglarized somewhat more often than homes in Kern County, based on the California Department of Justice’s 2025 data. Of 3,539 burglaries reported across the county that year, 2,151 were non-residential and 1,388 were residential — a 60.8 to 39.2 split favoring commercial targets.
That share runs just below the statewide figure: California as a whole reported a higher commercial share in 2025, at 62.2 percent of 109,596 burglaries. Bakersfield, the county’s anchor city, ran higher than both at 66.4 percent, while the Kern County Sheriff’s Department’s coverage area ran lower, at 53.4 percent.
What time of day do commercial burglaries happen in Kern County?
Kern County commercial burglaries skew to night among cases where a time was recorded. Agencies logged 1,161 non-residential burglaries as night and 581 as day in 2025, so 66.6 percent of the 1,742 with a recorded time occurred at night.
A further 409 commercial burglaries, or 19.0 percent of the total, carry no recorded time — larger than Ventura County’s 0.9 percent gap in this series, though smaller than the Inland Empire’s 31.8 percent. Bakersfield’s own figures carry no such gap: all 1,161 of its non-residential burglaries are timed, and 63.9 percent of them happened at night. Businesses are entered mostly after dark among the cases where a time is known.
How many Kern County crimes lead to an arrest?
Kern County clears most crime categories above the California average, according to the California Department of Justice, but not violent crime. Agencies in the county cleared 487 of 3,539 burglaries in 2025, a clearance rate of 13.8 percent, compared with 10.2 percent statewide.
Vehicle theft cleared at 7.6 percent against California’s 6.6 percent, larceny-theft at 13.4 percent against 12.6 percent, and overall property clearance at 12.1 percent against 11.2 percent statewide. Violent crime is the exception: Kern County cleared 40.9 percent of 5,968 violent offenses, below California’s statewide rate of 45.9 percent.
Is crime rising or falling in Kern County?
Kern County property crime is falling sharply while violent crime is falling much more slowly. Total property offenses dropped 40.4 percent between 2021 and 2025, from 29,208 to 17,416, while violent crime fell only 11.2 percent over the same five years.
Shoplifting moved the opposite way, rising 46.1 percent and now accounting for 31.4 percent of all larceny-theft in the county, up from 14.2 percent in 2021. Vehicle theft fell the fastest of any single category, down 54.4 percent. A countywide summary of falling crime is accurate for property offenses in aggregate and misleading for retail operators specifically.
Which Kern County jurisdiction has the most property crime?
Bakersfield reports the most property crime of any Kern County jurisdiction by a wide margin, according to the California Department of Justice, with 9,400 offenses in 2025 — 54.0 percent of the countywide total. The Kern County Sheriff’s Department’s coverage area is second, with 5,906.
Together, Bakersfield and the sheriff’s jurisdiction account for 93.1 percent of countywide property crime; the next-largest cities — Delano, Shafter and Wasco — each reported only a few hundred offenses apiece. Bakersfield’s commercial burglary share, 66.4 percent, is also the highest of the county’s five largest jurisdictions, ahead of the sheriff’s 53.4 percent.
Where do these Kern County crime statistics come from?
These Kern County crime statistics are drawn from the California Department of Justice Crimes and Clearances file covering 1985 through 2025, published through OpenJustice in July 2026. Population denominators come from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Vintage 2025 population estimates for both the county and Bakersfield.
Every headline figure was derived twice, once from the annual file and once by summing the monthly rows for 2025 in the separate by-month file. Nineteen county-level figures and nine Bakersfield-level figures all matched exactly. These are UCR summary counts and are not comparable with, and must never be added to, NIBRS incident data published by individual cities.
