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Motor vehicle theft in the United States

Law enforcement agencies reported 665,377 motor vehicle theft offenses in 2025, a rate of 199.9 per 100,000 residents of the population those agencies covered.

American Factbook Research

2025

665,377
Offenses reported
199.9
Rate per 100,000
69,827
Offenses cleared
10.5%
Share cleared
332,920,308
Population covered
96.4%
Reporting coverage

The rate denominator is the population the reporting agencies served, not the population of the United States, so the rate here is the rate the FBI computes. A clearance is an offense an agency closed by arrest or by exceptional means. The FBI clears an offense by arrest once a person has been arrested, charged, and turned over to a court for prosecution, which is where the record ends; on our reading that makes the share cleared a measure of cases closed, not of cases that ended in a conviction. The FBI also notes that a clearance recorded in one year may close an offense reported in an earlier one.

1985 to 2025

Reported motor vehicle theft rate, 1985 to 2025. Motor vehicle theft offenses per 100,000 residents, using the FBI’s own population denominator for the agencies that reported. Only years reported in full are plotted; a gap is a year with no published rate, not a year of none.
Federal Bureau of Investigation, Criminal Justice Information Services Division — FBI Crime Data Explorer API
The figures behind this chart
Reported motor vehicle theft rate, 1985 to 2025. Motor vehicle theft offenses per 100,000 residents, using the FBI’s own population denominator for the agencies that reported. Only years reported in full are plotted; a gap is a year with no published rate, not a year of none.
YearMotor vehicle theft rate
1985472.3
1986521.4
1987543.7
1988595.9
1989648.9
1990676.6
1991698.9
1992661.3
1993627.7
1994614.5
1995596.2
1996553.9
1997541.1
1998491.9
1999445.1
2000436.8
2001455.7
2002452.6
2003454.7
2004437.0
2005433.8
2006410.0
2007372.1
2008321.3
2009263.8
2010241.1
2011232.1
2012232.4
2013223.7
2014217.3
2015222.6
2016239.5
2017238.9
2018230.6
2019220.4
2020246.6
2021240.2
2022290.2
2023326.0
2024257.6
2025199.9

The FBI has also published 9 months of 2026. That year is not plotted and is not compared with a full year here, because a part-year total is smaller for the reason that it is shorter.

By state · 2025

Every jurisdiction the FBI published a motor vehicle theft rate for in 2025, ranked from the highest rate. The coverage column is the share of each state’s population living in a reporting agency’s jurisdiction; below 90%, both the count and the rate describe part of the state.

1 more column on a wider screen

Jurisdictions ranked by reported motor vehicle theft rate, 2025
RankStateRate per 100,000OffensesCoverage
1District of Columbia698.34,844100.0%
2Nevada400.913,11299.6%
3New Mexico334.56,67693.9%
4Maryland319.620,025100.0%
5California317.4124,872100.0%
6Colorado314.518,74699.1%
7Missouri297.918,43898.7%
8Hawaii291.74,179100.0%
9Alaska280.92,06499.7%
10Washington258.820,19997.5%
11Texas250.978,86299.1%
12Illinois247.629,81894.7%
13Tennessee229.116,68999.6%
14Kansas224.56,33794.8%
15Oregon217.49,10898.0%
16North Carolina207.222,41596.6%
17Oklahoma196.18,07699.9%
18Kentucky192.88,883100.0%
19Ohio191.121,21093.2%
20Delaware190.72,021100.0%
21Pennsylvania190.524,67599.2%
22Michigan187.618,40096.9%
23Nebraska186.53,74399.4%
24Arizona183.713,69797.8%
25Indiana177.010,81387.6%
26Connecticut172.16,348100.0%
27Louisiana167.66,03878.0%
28Minnesota165.99,65499.8%
29South Carolina165.28,86596.4%
30Alabama162.98,39699.3%
31Georgia160.616,43690.5%
32North Dakota154.11,21798.8%
33New Jersey148.413,82597.6%
34South Dakota145.31,21989.7%
35Mississippi144.33,47381.5%
36Arkansas142.04,35498.4%
37Montana137.31,572100.0%
38Wisconsin134.97,82397.1%
39New York128.725,42598.8%
40Iowa119.73,76197.1%
41Virginia114.410,160100.0%
42Rhode Island105.41,16198.8%
43Utah97.03,39798.9%
44Massachusetts88.96,34599.8%
45Wyoming82.344892.5%
46West Virginia71.81,10887.3%
47Florida66.513,16184.4%
48Maine60.484398.6%
49Idaho53.81,07898.6%
50New Hampshire53.675899.9%
51Vermont49.431899.8%

How to read this

  • Reporting to the FBI is voluntary. Coverage varies by agency and by year, so a change in a total can be a change in which agencies reported rather than a change in offenses.
  • Rates on this page divide by the population the reporting agencies served, which is the FBI’s own population figure for the jurisdiction multiplied by the share of it those agencies covered. Dividing by the whole population instead would understate the rate by exactly the share that did not report.
  • An annual rate is the annual count over that denominator. It is never the average of the FBI’s monthly rates, because averaging rates across months of differing coverage produces a number that belongs to no population.

Sources

  • FBI Crime Data Explorer APIFederal Bureau of Investigation, Criminal Justice Information Services Division · U.S. Government work, public domain (17 U.S.C. 105) · retrieved September 19, 2026

Data retrieved