How Common is Arson?

6/25/2021 (Permalink)

Arson is a serious problem here in the United States. While most of us will never have to deal with the consequences of arson, those of us that do are burdened not only with a disaster, but the knowledge that it was purposefully created.

How common is arson, though? We’ll dive into the statistics, straight from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program.

What is arson?

The FBI defines arson as “any willful or malicious burning or attempting to burn, with or without intent to defraud, a dwelling house, public building, motor vehicle or aircraft, personal property of another, etc.”

In other words, arson means someone set a fire on purpose to destroy property. They might have done this in order to get insurance money, or in the heat of passion, or just to see something burn. As long as it’s “willful or malicious,” it’s arson.

What do we know about arson?

The FBI gathered statistics on arson in 2019. Here’s what they found:

• There were about 33,395 arsons in the United States in 2019 – just over 90 per day on average.
• 42 percent of those arsons were structural, meaning someone attempted to burn down a home, business, storage unit or other building.
• 6 percent of arsons targeted mobile property.
• 35 percent of arsons targeted other sorts of property, e.g. crops, timber and fences, that would not be considered to be mobile.
• The average arson caused $16,371 in damages.
• The most expensive arsons, on average, were in industrial structures or manufacturing plants, where the average dollar loss was $190,336.
• Arson was slightly down year-over-year, decreasing by 4.9 percent.
• There are 10.9 arsons for every 100,000 people living in the United States.

Frankly, these statistics surprised us. We knew arsons happened, but they were much more common than we realized.

If you’re interested in diving deeper into the statistics, you can check them out here: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/topic-pages/arson