FBI Uniform Crime Reporting · 2024
U.S. Arson
34,990 arson offenses were reported by 25,445 law-enforcement agencies in 2024— intentionally set fires, counted once per agency across the FBI's two reporting streams. Browse every state and county, or map arson in the explorer.
Which arson number is right?
You will see three different 2024 arson totals in the wild. 34,990is our count: every reporting agency counted once, de-duplicated across the FBI's two overlapping streams (SRS summary: 35,062; NIBRS incidents: 32,038). 36,558is the FBI's own de-duplicated figure, drawn from its live database (which includes some later-arriving reports) — ours covers about 96% of it. And the ~67,100that some reports publish — including the FBI's own arson trend tables — simply adds the two streams together, counting most fires roughly twice.
Arson by state
Reported arson offenses, 2024. Coverage varies by state — some states have near-complete reporting, others little.
Counties with the most reported arson
Arsons are placed in the reporting agency's headquarters county, so counties hosting large or multi-jurisdiction agencies rank high.
About this data
- Counts are arson offenses (fires), not arrests. Each figure is a fire that a law-enforcement agency determined or suspected was intentionally set. Arson arrests are a different, much smaller number — most arsons are never cleared — and are tracked separately in our Arrests dataset.
- The figures are de-duplicated across the FBI's two overlapping reporting streams — the legacy SRS summary system and NIBRS incident data. Most agencies appear in both, so naively summing the two streams, as some published totals do, roughly doubles the count. Each agency here is counted once, from its best available stream.
- Reported agencies only. The total covers agencies in the FBI's 2024 master files — about 96% of the FBI's own de-duplicated figure of 36,558, which comes from its live database and includes some later-arriving reports. Nothing here is estimated, so totals slightly undercount and are not strictly comparable across areas with different reporting coverage.
- Location is the reporting agency's headquarters county, not where the fire happened. Multi-jurisdiction agencies concentrate in one county — every NYPD-reported arson lands in New York County, for example — and county figures cover geolocated agencies only, so they sum to slightly less than the national total.
- Zero and missing mean different things. A zero means agencies in that county reported to the FBI and logged no arson; a county with no figure at all had no reporting agency headquartered there.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program, 2024 SRS and NIBRS files, de-duplicated by agency. pumsdata is independent and not affiliated with the FBI. How our data works.
U.S. arson data — FAQ
How many arsons were reported in the U.S. in 2024?+
The 25,445 law-enforcement agencies in the FBI's 2024 files reported 34,990 arson offenses, counting each agency once across the FBI's two overlapping reporting streams. The FBI's own de-duplicated 2024 figure — from its live database, which includes some later-arriving reports — is 36,558.
Which state has the most arson?+
California led 2024 with 7,514 reported arson offenses, followed by Texas (2,759) and Pennsylvania (1,458).
Why do some reports cite nearly twice as many arsons?+
Figures near 67,100 sum the FBI's two overlapping reporting streams — the legacy SRS summary (35,062 arsons in 2024) and NIBRS incident data (32,038). Most agencies appear in both streams, so that addition counts the same fires roughly twice (67,100 combined). De-duplicating by agency yields 34,990, in line with the FBI's official 36,558.
Where does this data come from?+
The FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program's 2024 SRS and NIBRS files, de-duplicated by agency. Counts are arson offenses (fires), not arrests, from reporting agencies only. pumsdata is independent and not affiliated with the FBI.