Personal theft falls for a second consecutive year
After a sustained upward trend that took personal-theft cases from 94,427 in 2014 to a peak of 391,005 in 2023, the figure began to reverse: 316,216 cases in 2024 and 289,374 in 2025, two consecutive years of decline, the first since this data series began. Between January and May 2026, 111,772 cases were recorded, a figure that, if the trend holds, would confirm a third straight year of decline.
Personal theft is, alongside extortion, one of the crimes that most affects Colombians' daily lives, beyond statistics on armed violence. The Ministry of Defense has pointed out an important nuance for reading these figures honestly: the country's population has also grown during this period, so the theft rate per 100,000 people — a more precise measure than the raw case count — likely shows an even greater improvement than the total figures suggest on their own.
Its sustained decline — though still far from the levels of a decade ago — is one of the indicators the Ministry has used to show results in everyday urban security, not just in rural armed conflict. In that sense, it's a necessary complement to homicide, kidnapping, or extortion figures: it measures a different kind of insecurity, the one most Colombians experience directly in their daily lives.
