Fewer burglaries are occurring in the Winona area, and police say it may be because more people are out of work, at home and keeping watch in their neighborhoods.

Police nationwide say a lower burglary rate is one of the few bright spots of the recession.

Burglary reports dropped a whopping 22 percent in Winona County from 2007, when 172 were reported, to 2008, when 135 were reported. The trend is continuing this year, and it appears likely there could be fewer burglaries reported in 2009 than in either of the previous two years, according to police records.

"If there's more people in a neighborhood, it discourages those activities, because there are more eyes and ears out there," Winona Police Chief Paul Bostrack said.

The numbers aren't surprising to Bostrack, who says burglaries are more likely to come at the hands of career criminals - not people down on their luck because of the recession. In Winona, burglars are often drug users looking to steal items to sell so they can feed their habit, the chief said.

Those burglars will perform a string of break-ins over a short period of time, temporarily spiking statistics, Goodview Police Chief Kent Russell said.

"A lot of times, it's the same people over and over again," Russell said. "And once they get caught, it goes away."

Russell anticipated break-ins would increase in the recession, so he ordered more walking patrols to prevent burglaries. Proactive policing may have more to do with the decline than economics, he said.

But in some regional communities, the number of burglaries hasn't changed much - or is rising.

In La Crosse, Wis., 293 burglaries were reported Jan. 1 through Nov. 1, compared with 250 and 251 in the same period in 2008 and 2007 respectively. The La Crosse County Sheriff's Department handled 41 burglaries Jan. 1 to Oct. 31, down nine from the same period in 2008. A total of 38 were reported Jan. 1 to Oct. 31, 2007. The department does not attribute the 2009 decline to economic conditions.

"There is a high rate of unemployment, but it doesn't mean that unemployed people are staying home 24 hours a day," Capt. Mike Horstman said. "Crime cycles, and while we hope it stays in a downward trend, we realize many crimes are opportunistic."

In Minneapolis, the number of burglaries reported in roughly the first nine months of the year dropped more than 15 percent compared with the same period last year, and more than 25 percent compared with that period in 2007. Burglaries are down in other large cities, including Boston, where the 2,199 burglaries reported in roughly the first nine months of the year is 335 fewer than in the same period last year.

In many cities, other crimes including homicide, robbery and rape have been dropping for several years, according to FBI statistics. But burglary stands out because the rate actually rose between 2007 and 2008, and experts expected that trend to continue as the recession dragged on and unemployment rose.

Richard Rosenfeld, a sociologist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis who has studied crime trends, said rates typically rise during a recession, especially property crimes.

"We've seen that in every single recession in the U.S. at least since the '50s," he said. "I would have expected by now some upward movement in burglary numbers."

Some police believe the falling price of copper and other scrap metals - a target of burglars who strip the metal from vacant homes - may have contributed to the trend.

Lee Newspapers and The Associated Press contributed to this report.