Auto Thefts Are Plunging Where They Surged And Nowhere Else

The weird trend in auto thefts is still weird.

The FBI released very much preliminary quarterly data for 2023 in March 2024. Every major crime except one fell per the preliminary data. Can you spot the outlier?

Auto theft has increased a lot since 2019, substantially surged more than murder because it has been 4 straight years of increases. The problem worsened in mid-2022 when a video was placed on social media that showed how to steal certain models of Kia and Hyundai vehicles. What followed was a massive surges in auto thefts in many major cities that came on basically overnight.

How TikTok Helped Cause A Surge In Auto Thefts

Overall, auto thefts were probably around 40 percent higher in 2023 than they were in 2019 (the national murder rate was probably 10-15 percent higher by comparison). As an aside, and I’m not a big “but things were worse in the ‘90s!'“ guy, I don’t think people appreciate how frequent these offenses were in the 1990s — the auto theft rate nationally in 2022 was still around 60 percent lower than it was in 1990 despite three straight years of large increases.

Anyhow, the surge in auto thefts between 2019 and 2023 was largely a big city thing though smaller cities also saw increases. To show this I compared the rate of crimes per 100,000 people by city size published by the FBI in 2019 and 2022¹ (2023 data isn't available yet). The rate of auto thefts more or less doubled in cities of 1 million or more between 2019 and 2022 (aside again, the auto theft rate in cities of 1 million or more in 1990 was over 2,000 per 100,000!), while the increases in smaller cities was much more modest.

This trend appears to have continued in 2023, though the FBI’s quarterly data suggests the problem in 2023 was mostly concentrated in bigger cities with auto thefts in cities under 250,000 being largely unchanged. We can’t break down auto thefts by manufacturer at a national level, but I’m guessing the majority of the surge was due to Kia and Hyundais being stolen. Here's what the FBI’s quarterly data suggests happens with auto thefts broken down by city size:

There was evidence that the tide was beginning to turn as the calendar switched to 2024. I even wrote about it in January.

Evidence That Auto Theft Will Decline In 2024

Well it’s June and we can begin to figure out the national trend using a large sample of cities. Auto thefts are down nearly 15 percent in a sample of 186 cities with data through at least April. Here’s the full list of cities I was able to grab if you’re interested:

The overall decline certainly stands out — especially after four straight years of increases. What really pops out though is that auto thefts are falling a ton in the cities with a lot of auto thefts this year but they are basically even everywhere else. There were 20 cities that had 2,500 or more auto thefts reported YTD in 2023 accounting for roughly two-thirds of the auto thefts in the sample. Auto thefts are down in every one of those 20 cities and are down 22 percent as a whole in that group. Auto thefts are down only 1 percent in the other 167 cities in the sample with some smaller cities seeing astronomical growth.

Looking at a few city examples shows that the big city decline is also accelerating, so the decline we see at the end of the year may be even greater than the 15 or so percent decline we’re currently seeing. Here, for example are auto thefts in Chicago and Washington, DC rolling over 12 months showing a clear peak in both cities at some point in 2023 and a steady decline ever since.

Auto thefts are still substantially higher in 2024 than they were at this point 3 or 4 years ago in the cities that saw surges. Auto thefts are down 24 percent relative to YTD 2023 but up 169 percent relative to YTD 2020 in Chicago, down 31 percent relative to 2023 but up 102 percent relative to 2020 in DC, down 39 percent relative to 2023 but up 85 percent relative to 2020 in Philadelphia, and I could go on.

These offenses are falling, which is a positive development. But they are still far more plentiful than they were in 2019, and the decline is not everywhere — in contrast to the murder rise and fall. It remains to be seen whether big cities will see pre-surge levels or plateau at a higher rate.

1. Table 12 has the breakdown of crimes by population groups, but since the sample changes from year to year it’s not exactly apples to apples. As such, I converted the totals into a rate based on the population reporting in each population group to give a rough estimate of how auto theft rates have changed.