The difference between attempted burglary and burglary comes down to one physical fact: whether the person actually got inside. A completed burglary means someone crossed the threshold of a building or structure with the intent to commit a crime inside. Attempted burglary means they took a concrete step toward that entry and never made it in. Both require criminal intent, both are usually felonies, and both can carry years in prison, but the attempt almost always carries a lighter maximum sentence in states that separate the two offenses.
The Dividing Line Is Entry
In states that treat these as separate crimes, everything before the person or a tool under their control crosses the physical boundary of the structure is an attempt. The moment something crosses that boundary with criminal intent, the burglary is complete.
Courts sometimes call this “crossing the plane” of the building’s outer boundary, and it applies literally. Someone prying at a locked door from the outside is in attempt territory. The second the door swings open and a hand, a foot, or even the pry bar itself passes into the interior space, the crime becomes a completed burglary. Courts in several jurisdictions have held that inserting any instrument through a window or doorway is enough entry to complete the offense, even if no part of the person’s body goes inside.
How narrowly courts draw this line was on display in a California Supreme Court case involving a man who used a stolen remote control to open someone’s garage door. He was caught before he or anything he controlled physically entered the garage. The trial court initially treated the case as a completed burglary, reasoning that opening the door was itself an entry. The Supreme Court disagreed, ruling that merely opening the door, without anything crossing the threshold, was attempted burglary and not the completed offense. The distinction came down to inches.
What a Completed Burglary Requires
Prosecutors have to prove two things. First, that the defendant made an unauthorized entry into a building or structure. Second, that at the moment of entry, the defendant intended to commit a crime inside. Theft is the usual target crime, but assault, vandalism, or any other offense qualifies.
Modern statutes have moved past the old image of someone smashing a window in the middle of the night. Most jurisdictions no longer require any physical “breaking.” Pushing open an unlocked door, stepping through a window someone left ajar, or reaching an arm inside an opening all satisfy the entry element. The entry doesn’t need to be forceful. It just needs to be unauthorized.
The crime is complete the instant that unauthorized entry happens with criminal intent. Whether the person actually steals anything, hurts anyone, or accomplishes any part of the plan is legally irrelevant. Someone who slips into a house planning to take jewelry, panics, and runs out empty-handed two seconds later has committed a completed burglary. It feels counterintuitive because nothing was taken and nothing was damaged, but the law treats entry plus intent as the finished offense.
The type of structure matters for how serious the charge is. Entering an occupied home is almost always treated as the most serious form of burglary. Entering an empty commercial building, a warehouse, a storage shed, or in some states a vehicle typically falls into a lower category.
What Attempted Burglary Requires
Attempted burglary also has two elements. The person intended to commit a burglary, and they took a “substantial step” toward carrying it out but never completed the entry. The substantial-step requirement is what separates people who think about committing crimes from people who act on those thoughts.
A substantial step is an overt action that goes beyond planning and clearly points toward a criminal purpose. Prying at a window frame with a screwdriver, drilling into a lock, cutting a hole in a fence around a building, or disabling a security camera all qualify. Buying a crowbar at a hardware store, by itself, isn’t enough. Driving to a target property at night, putting on gloves, and starting to work on a door with that crowbar almost certainly is.
The attempt is complete even if the person is interrupted before making any real progress. An alarm going off, a neighbor shouting, or police arriving mid-act all cut the attempt short, but the crime of attempted burglary is already locked in once the substantial step is taken. What matters is what the person did and intended, not how close they got to succeeding.
Where Preparation Ends and Attempt Begins
The line between preparation and a substantial step is one of the murkier areas of criminal law, and courts draw it differently. Driving past a property to study its layout, sometimes called “casing,” is generally still on the preparation side. Courts look at the totality of the person’s actions. Someone found at 2 a.m. on a stranger’s porch with a bag of tools and a ski mask, who hasn’t yet touched the door, is much closer to the attempt line than someone who bought supplies earlier that day. The more the circumstances show the person was committed to going through with the crime, the more likely a court will find a substantial step.
How the Penalties Compare
Where the law separates the two offenses, attempted burglary carries a lighter sentence than the completed crime. Many states set the punishment for a criminal attempt at a statutory fraction of the maximum for the underlying offense. A common formula caps the attempt at half the prison term available for the completed crime. Some states use different fractions. A few jurisdictions following the Model Penal Code’s approach grade most attempts at the same level as the completed offense, with exceptions for the most serious felonies.
Rough numbers: a completed first-degree residential burglary might carry a potential sentence in the range of five to fifteen years depending on jurisdiction and circumstances. The corresponding attempt could be capped at half that range, or could still carry substantial time in states with harsher attempt statutes. At the lower end, an attempted burglary of an unoccupied commercial building might be charged as a lower-level felony or even a misdemeanor in some jurisdictions.
The degree of the offense drives the numbers. Most states divide burglary this way:
- First-degree burglary covers entering an occupied residence. It’s treated as the most serious form because of the risk of a violent confrontation, and it’s almost always a felony carrying significant prison time.
- Second-degree burglary covers entering a commercial building or an unoccupied structure. Still a felony in most places, with lower penalties than first-degree.
- Third-degree burglary, recognized in some states, applies to less serious scenarios like entering an unlocked vehicle or an open structure with intent to steal. This may be a lower-level felony or, in limited cases, a misdemeanor.
The degree carries over to the attempt. An attempted first-degree burglary of an occupied home is treated far more seriously than an attempted break-in of an empty storage unit.
Beyond prison time, both convictions can carry fines, typically ranging from $5,000 to $25,000 for felony-level offenses, and courts routinely order restitution for any property damage. Someone who pried open a door or broke a window during an attempted burglary can be ordered to pay for those repairs even though they never made it inside.
Aggravating Factors
Certain circumstances push penalties up for both offenses:
- Carrying a weapon during either offense can add years to a sentence and may trigger mandatory minimums in some states.
- Targeting a building where people are present, especially a home, moves the offense into higher penalty tiers.
- Repeat offenders face enhanced sentences, and some states have habitual offender statutes that dramatically increase prison time for a second or third burglary-related conviction.
- Targeting the home of an elderly or disabled person can be treated as its own aggravating factor.
Defenses That Apply Differently to the Attempt
A few defense strategies come up with attempted burglary that don’t apply, or apply differently, to a completed burglary.
Voluntary Abandonment
In many jurisdictions, a person who voluntarily and completely abandons a criminal plan before completing the offense has a defense to an attempt charge. “Voluntary” has a narrow meaning here. Stopping because you changed your mind, felt guilty, or decided the crime was wrong qualifies. Stopping because a police car pulled up, an alarm went off, or the lock was harder to pick than expected does not. That’s being thwarted, not giving up.
The abandonment also has to be complete. Deciding to come back tomorrow night, or to target the neighbor’s house instead, isn’t abandonment. The person has to genuinely walk away from the whole plan, not postpone or redirect it.
Factual Impossibility Doesn’t Help
If someone tries to break into what they believe is a jewelry store, but the building turns out to be empty and abandoned with nothing to steal, they can still be convicted of attempted burglary. The law cares about what the defendant believed and intended, not whether the crime could actually have succeeded. Factual impossibility, where the objective is illegal but some unknown circumstance prevents success, is not a recognized defense to attempt charges in any jurisdiction.
Lack of Intent
Because both offenses require specific intent to commit a crime inside the structure, challenging that intent is the most common defense strategy overall. If the defendant can show they had no plan to commit a crime inside, or were intoxicated to the point they couldn’t form the required intent, the charge may not hold. Prosecutors rarely have a confession, so they build intent from circumstantial evidence: lock picks or a pry bar, gloves and a mask at 3 a.m., a beeline for a safe or cash register once inside. Weak evidence on that point is often what drops a burglary case down to criminal trespass.
Related Charges Often Stacked On
Criminal trespass is worth flagging because people often confuse it with burglary. Trespass requires only that the person entered or remained on property without permission. No further criminal intent is needed. Trespass is generally treated as a lesser included offense of burglary, and a jury can convict on trespass instead if it believes the entry happened but isn’t convinced about the criminal intent. Trespass is usually a misdemeanor while burglary is typically a felony.
Possession of burglary tools is a separate offense in most states, and it frequently shows up alongside attempted burglary charges. It covers possessing any instrument, whether a crowbar, a lock pick set, a slim jim, a screwdriver, or even a spark plug used to shatter tempered glass, with the intent to use it for a break-in or theft. The intent element does all the work: a locksmith carrying lock picks or a contractor with a pry bar in the truck hasn’t committed any crime. The same tools in the hands of someone lurking outside a closed business at midnight look very different. In some states, even clothing designed to conceal identity, like ski masks and latex gloves, can qualify. The charge is typically a misdemeanor, but stacking it on top of an attempted burglary charge reinforces the prosecution’s argument about criminal intent.
How the Distinction Plays Out in Plea Negotiations
In practice, the line between burglary and attempted burglary often becomes a negotiating point. Prosecutors may offer to reduce a completed burglary charge to attempted burglary as part of a plea agreement, particularly for first-time offenders or cases where the evidence of entry is contested. Because the attempt carries a lower maximum sentence, accepting that kind of deal can mean the difference between a lengthy prison term and a much shorter one.
The reverse happens too. Defendants originally charged with attempted burglary sometimes see that charge used as leverage: plead to the attempt, or go to trial and risk a conviction on additional charges like possession of burglary tools, criminal trespass, or vandalism. Whether a plea offer is genuinely favorable depends on how strong the evidence of entry actually is, and that turns on the same physical question the whole distinction rests on: did anything cross the threshold?