Eighteen residential burglaries a week. That is Ghent’s average for 2025, with 944 incidents recorded over the year. The figure is falling — 13.2% lower than in 2024, 22.7% lower than in 2019 — yet it remains higher than what the city saw at the turn of the century. In a built fabric as tight as Ghent’s, the deciding variable is neither the lock nor the camera: it is the number of people able to notice that something is happening.
A real decline, at a level still above that of 2000
The series published by the federal police for Ghent: 1,221 incidents in 2019, 844 in 2020, 825 in 2021, 1,218 in 2022, 1,059 in 2023, 1,087 in 2024, 944 in 2025.
Two lessons emerge. The first is that the 2020–2021 dip was nothing permanent: by 2022, the city was almost back to its 2019 level. The lockdown did not reduce burglary; it suspended it. The second is that the recent decline is not linear: 2024 rose slightly on 2023 before the 2025 fall.
The long view is harsher. Ghent reached its peak in 2015 with 1,841 incidents; the 944 of 2025 therefore represent barely more than half that peak, which is a considerable result. But in 2000, the city recorded 831 residential burglaries. Twenty-five years later, it is still above that. The current decline is bringing Ghent back towards its pre-surge level, not below it.
Of the 1,214 burglaries in buildings recorded in 2025, 78% target homes. The remainder — shops, offices, workshops, warehouses — remains substantial in a port and university city, but the bulk of Ghent’s burglary problem plays out behind the doors of homes.
Ghent’s housing shifts the point of entry
Ghent is a city of narrow terraced townhouses, beluiken — the workers’ cul-de-sacs clustered around a courtyard — and old buildings divided into flats and student housing. This density redistributes vulnerabilities.
The first weak point is not the street façade, which is often too exposed, but the shared entrance: carriage door, intercom, stairwell. Once through that door, the intruder moves out of sight and attacks landing doors which, in older buildings, are often simple interior doors fitted when the building was divided. Tailgating — entering behind someone who has just opened the door — requires no tools.
The second weak point is the rear: inner courtyards, annexes, kitchen glass roofs, flat roofs reachable from a party wall. In a beluik or the interior of a Ghent block, these rear façades are visible from no street, but they are visible to all the neighbours. That is exactly where the social fabric becomes a security system.
The neighbourhood information network, Ghent’s security tool par excellence
Flanders has developed buurtinformatienetwerken — neighbourhood information networks — more systematically than the rest of the country, and Ghent uses them widely. The principle is simple: a group of residents in a neighbourhood, a coordinator, and a messaging channel run in conjunction with the local police, which makes it possible to relay verified information quickly — a reported attempt, a precisely described suspicious vehicle, a series of break-ins in a street.
What this system brings is not surveillance, it is speed. A residential burglary plays out in a few minutes; information that circulates the next day has no operational value, whereas the same information shared within the hour changes the behaviour of an entire street.
We must be honest about its limits. A neighbourhood network detects nothing by itself: it spreads what someone has seen. It works well in stable neighbourhoods and much less where tenant turnover is high, which is the case in several Ghent neighbourhoods. And it never tells you what is happening in your home while you are at work. It should be seen as a layer of collective intelligence, not as a substitute for detection.
Watchful neighbours and alarm verification: where the neighbour’s role stops
In Belgium, the police only respond to an alarm after verification: someone must have observed a serious sign of intrusion. Many Ghent residents implicitly entrust this task to a neighbour who has a key. It is a solution that works — until the day it exposes that neighbour to entering a home where someone is still inside, or simply fails because the neighbour is away, on holiday or at work.
Technical verification solves this problem without shifting the risk onto a third party. Photo-verification detectors send an image when the alarm goes off: within seconds, you know whether it is an animal, a draught or a person. A Wi-Fi camera in the stairwell or on the inner courtyard plays the same role in the areas you legally control.
For a divided Ghent building, the most effective combination remains modest: magnetic contacts on the landing door and the rear access, a control panel that notifies you immediately, a keypad with individual codes when several people share the home, and an outdoor siren — in a narrow street where façades face each other, the noise instantly mobilises the neighbours, which is precisely the desired effect. Alarm kits cover this type of configuration well.
No municipal grant identified in Ghent, but free advice
No Ghent municipal grant for burglary protection could be identified. It is worth recalling in passing what such grants fund where they exist: mechanical protection — reinforced cylinders and locks, burglar-resistant glazing, doors and frames. Alarms and cameras are excluded. No Belgian municipality reimburses an alarm system, and websites that suggest otherwise are wrong.
What does exist and costs nothing is the diefstalpreventieadviseur, the burglary prevention adviser of the Ghent local police (5415). The adviser visits, examines your actual access points and has nothing to sell. Requests are made via the zone’s burglary prevention advice page. In a divided building, the visit has an additional benefit: the adviser looks at the common areas, which most occupants consider someone else’s problem.
Legal obligations, identical in all three regions
They are federal: neither the Flemish Region nor the City of Ghent adds anything to them.
Alarm: declaration within ten days via police-on-web, annual confirmation, outdoor siren limited to three minutes, annual maintenance, mandatory verification before police intervention — Royal Decree of 25 April 2007. Our guide on the declaration of an alarm system in Belgium details the procedure.
Camera: declaration on declarationcamera.be, regulatory pictogram, record of processing activities, ban on filming the public highway and other people’s property. In a Ghent street a few metres wide, or in a beluik where courtyards adjoin, this rule is not theoretical: it often requires pointing the camera downwards and digitally masking part of the field of view. See our article on the camera law in Belgium.
Frequently asked questions
How many burglaries were there in Ghent in 2025?
944 residential burglaries were recorded in Ghent in 2025, an average of 18.2 per week. This is 13.2% fewer than in 2024 (1,087 incidents) and 22.7% fewer than in 2019 (1,221 incidents).
What is a neighbourhood information network and what can it really do?
It is a group of residents organised with the local police to quickly share verified information within a neighbourhood: attempted break-ins, suspicious vehicles, a series of incidents in a street. Its strength is the speed at which information circulates; its limit is that it detects nothing by itself and does not watch your home while you are away.
Is there a municipal grant for securing your home in Ghent?
No Ghent municipal grant for burglary protection could be identified. Where such grants exist in Belgium, they fund only mechanical protection — locks, cylinders, burglar-resistant glazing, frames — and explicitly exclude alarm systems and cameras. The burglary prevention adviser of the Ghent local police remains free of charge.
What is the most exposed point of entry in a Ghent building?
The shared entrance, then the landing door. Once past the street door or intercom, the intruder operates out of sight, and landing doors resulting from the division of an old building are often simple interior doors. Rear courtyards and annexes, invisible from the street, are the second weak point.
Who must verify the alarm before a police intervention in Ghent?
Verification is mandatory throughout Belgium before a patrol responds to an alarm: a serious sign of intrusion must have been established. Entrusting this task to a neighbour who holds the key works poorly, as they may be away or put at risk. Photo or video verification of the areas you control settles the matter without shifting the risk onto a third party.
Sources: Police crime statistics, Federal Police DGR/DRI/BIPOL, publication 2025_T04 (closing date 24/04/2026) — Ghent municipal factsheet. Absence of a municipal home security grant checked against available public sources; schemes change from one year to the next, so check with the City before incurring any costs.