When Do Most Burglaries Happen? What the Dated US Data Shows

How old the timing evidence is

Every widely repeated claim about when burglaries happen in the United States runs back to a small number of old sources. That is the first thing to know about this question, and most pages that answer it do not tell you.

The clearest published statement comes from the problem-oriented policing guide Burglary of Single-Family Houses (Guide No. 18), written by Deborah Lamm Weisel and funded by the US Department of Justice COPS Office. The publisher dates the guide to 2002, and the crime figures it works from run through 1999. It reports that in the United States, most residential burglaries, about 60 percent of reported offenses, occur in the daytime, when houses are unoccupied.

One independent source points the same way and is older still. In Highlights from 20 Years of Surveying Crime Victims, covering the National Crime Victimization Survey from 1973 to 1992, BJS reported that where the time of occurrence was known, victims said over half of all burglaries took place during the day, between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. That is a victim survey rather than a count of police reports, so it is a genuinely separate measurement, and it agrees with the police-reported picture.

What does not exist, as far as we could find, is a current one. The FBI's national crime data does not publish a daytime versus nighttime burglary split, and the BJS annual Criminal Victimization reports, including the 2024 edition, do not include time of occurrence. We would rather say that than substitute a security vendor's blog post, and you should treat any page quoting a crisp current percentage without naming a federal dataset as unsourced.

So the honest framing is this. Two independent old measurements agree that daytime burglary of US homes is more common than most people assume. Nothing published since either confirms or overturns them. That supports a direction, not a number, and it does not support anyone claiming to know the 2026 figure.

What the old timing data actually said

Taking the 2002 guide on its own terms, the daytime share was not a constant even within the period it covers. The guide reports that in 1961 about 16 percent of residential burglaries occurred in the daytime, and that by 1995 the daytime share had risen to about 40 percent, against the roughly 60 percent figure it gives for reported offenses overall. The explanation it offers is the rise in women working outside the home across those decades, which left far more houses empty during working hours. Burglary followed the vacancy.

Within the day, the guide notes that some research finds burglars most often strike on weekdays, from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. and from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., times when even a routinely occupied house is likely to be empty. Some researchers split burglary times into morning (7 a.m. to 11 a.m.), afternoon (12 p.m. to 5 p.m.), evening (5 p.m. to 10 p.m.), and night (10 p.m. to 7 a.m.), a scheme that tracks when residents tend to be home. Those windows are the source of nearly every 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. claim you will see repeated, and they carry the same 1990s vintage as the headline figure.

A second limit sits underneath the age problem. Exact timing is usually unknown. Victims can rarely say when the burglary happened, only the range between leaving and returning, and police reports vary in whether they record the earliest possible time, the midpoint of a range, the time of the report, or the shift. Every time-of-day figure for burglary is built on that fuzziness, which is a reason to treat 60 percent as a strong tendency rather than a precise measurement even within its own era.

The pattern also breaks by country. The same guide notes about 56 percent of burglaries in Britain occur when it is dark, so do not import British findings into a US decision, or the reverse.

Season, where the data is more recent and better measured

Seasonality is the better half of this question, because the National Crime Victimization Survey asks victims which month the incident occurred and can therefore be analyzed month by month.

In its 2014 special report Seasonal Patterns in Criminal Victimization Trends, BJS analyzed NCVS data from 1993 to 2010 and found household burglary rates are highest in summer (June, July, August) and lowest in winter or spring. Compared with summer, average household burglary rates were about 11 percent lower in winter, 9 percent lower in spring, and 6 percent lower in fall. Among household property crimes, burglary showed the largest gap between its peak season (summer) and its trough (winter).

This evidence is more recent than the time-of-day material but it is not new either: the analysis window ends in 2010 and the report is from 2014. Treat it the same way, as a stable seasonal shape rather than a live statistic.

The seasonal swing has also shrunk. BJS compared the 1993 to 2010 results with its own earlier analysis of 1973 to 1977 National Crime Survey data, where burglaries were about 26 percent less frequent in winter than in summer. The pattern held; the size of it roughly halved.

The monthly detail points the same way. The 2002 DOJ burglary guide reports that in the United States, burglary rates are highest in August and lowest in February, while also noting that burglary does not typically show large seasonal variation. It attributes what variation there is to local factors: weather, how it affects occupancy, open windows and doors in warm weather, and vacation absences.

Keep the magnitudes in proportion. An 11 percent summer-to-winter difference is small next to the long-run decline in burglary itself. Over the same 1993 to 2010 window BJS measured, the household property victimization rate fell 62 percent. Season nudges your risk. The decade you live in moves it far more.

What the timing evidence licenses, and what it does not

The single thread running through both findings is occupancy. Daytime burglaries rose as houses emptied during working hours. Summer rates run highest during the months when households travel and leave windows open. Burglars, according to the offender research summarized in the DOJ guide, take considerable care to avoid occupied houses, and some routinely ring the doorbell first to confirm nobody is home.

Given the age of the data, here is the line we would draw.

It licenses treating daytime and extended absence as a real exposure rather than an afterthought. Two independent measurements, taken decades apart, both found daytime burglary common, and the mechanism behind that finding, empty houses, has not reversed. If your system, cameras, or habits go into a lower-alert mode during the workday, that is worth reconsidering.

It licenses the unglamorous occupancy measures: interior lights on timers, a car in the driveway, mail and deliveries collected, no visible pile-up during an absence. Extended vacancy is the strongest version of the risk, which is why it matters most for vacation and second homes.

It does not license a current percentage. Anyone telling you that a specific share of burglaries happens between specific hours in the United States today is quoting 1990s data without saying so, or quoting nothing at all.

It does not license reading deterrence into the pattern either. The evidence on signs, decals, and dummy alarms is genuinely mixed, and we go through it claim by claim in do security signs deter burglars.

And it does not tell you your own risk. National patterns say when burglaries clustered in the data we have, not whether one is coming to your address. Local police data and the specific weak points of your home (side and back entries, concealment, how long the house sits empty) matter far more than the hour on an old national chart.