Robbery

Robbery is theft with force or the threat of it. It is not burglary, which is breaking into a place, and not shoplifting or pickpocketing, which take things without force. Robbery has been one of the FBI's core counted crimes since it began collecting police reports in 1930, so it has one of the longest records of any crime.

Is robbery up?

No. Police reported 164,157 robberies in 2025, 19% fewer than in 2024. That is 51.1 for every 100,000 people, the lowest rate since 1960.

The peak came in 1991: 676,882 robberies, 286.1 per 100,000. The rate today is 18% of that.

These are CrimeDB's own sums of every agency's monthly reports to the FBI. The FBI publishes its own national estimate, which fills in for agencies that did not report; it puts 2025 at 168,927 robberies. Both count only robberies someone reported to police.

Who gets robbed?

The FBI's incident records (NIBRS) carry the detail. In 2025, agencies covering 88% of the population sent them, recording 149,397 robberies and 165,290 people robbed. Stores and other businesses are robbery victims too; the figures below count people.

67% of the people robbed were male. Most were adults of working age: 10% were under 18 and 6% were 65 or older.

Strangers are the largest group: 37% of adults robbed were robbed by a stranger. Many more have no relationship on record, often because no one was identified.

Who commits robbery?

Police recorded 208,791 known offenders in those robberies: anyone a victim or witness could describe, whether or not anyone was arrested. 79% were male, and 14% were under 18.

Here the record runs thin. Police recorded no race or ethnicity for 41% of known offenders, and no age for 28%. The unknowns may not be a random slice of offenders, so shares of the rest can mislead. We show them with the unknowns left in.

Rates need the population living where reporting agencies work, by race and age. That table is not built yet, so this page shows shares. Arrests by race, a separate count from the FBI's arrest reports, are loaded and come next.

Where and when

Streets, roads, and sidewalks are the most common place, with 32% of robberies. Homes come next, with 19%.

Robberies are fewest around 6 a.m. and rise every hour to an evening peak around 8 p.m.. The hour starting at midnight holds more than any other, 10,755. We have not yet checked how much of that comes from reports that put an unknown time at midnight.

What happens in court

Police records stop at the arrest. What happens next is in court records, kept county by county. We are starting with Harris County, Texas, whose district clerk publishes its felony case files.