Big Stone Gap, VA has a A safety grade (75/100) with a violent crime rate of 118 per 100,000, 66% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Big Stone Gap is a small municipal reporter (5,071 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with VA and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Big Stone Gap, VA is close to the national middle for violent crime, and earns an A PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 66% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Big Stone Gap, VA shows violent crime at 118.3 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,557.9 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 66% below the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade A from those rates. Figures are voluntary agency submissions joined to population denominators; incomplete coverage can move the number.
Small-count caution
Big Stone Gap reported 6 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 5,071. At this volume one additional or one fewer report moves the per-100,000 rate noticeably, so the figure is better read as a data point than as a precise measurement, and year-to-year swings here are expected.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Big Stone Gap's 118.3 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Shenandoah (121.0), Culpeper (122.1), Chincoteague (123.1), Chilhowie (124.4). These are same-year agency submissions that pass the same completeness screen, not a claim that the cities have identical conditions. They make the cohort position above checkable against named records instead of a generic state average.
Position in the state cohort
At 118.3 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Big Stone Gap ranks 84 of 125 — above 41 of the 124 other Virginia cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is -37.7% against the cohort median of 189.9. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 137.8 per 100,000 in 2020 to 118.3 in 2024 (-14.1%). The highest observed value was 156.6 in 2023 and the lowest 79.1 in 2021. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 7.1% of the 85 Part I offenses reported in Big Stone Gap for 2024, against a median of 10.7% across comparable Virginia cities — a gap of 3.7 points. Offense mix is shaped by which agencies report and how incidents are classified as well as by the underlying offenses, so it describes the reported record rather than a settled difference in conditions.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 78.5% of reported property offenses in Big Stone Gap, against a cohort median of 86.7%. The remainder is burglary (11) and motor vehicle theft (6). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Property counts dominate Big Stone Gap's FBI UCR Table 8 municipal row. Per-100,000 rates use the reporting-year population on that row; cities that fail the completeness test stay out of rate rankings. A citywide figure rarely describes any single neighbourhood inside the municipal boundary.
Based on 6 reported violent incidents in a population of 5,071. At this volume, one additional or one fewer report can shift the rate and letter grade noticeably; small-city crime counts are inherently more volatile year to year than large-city counts, so treat this grade as a data point, not a precise ranking.
Small-city offense counts above are voluntary UCR submissions, not neighbourhood advice. Year-to-year swings can look large when the population base is modest.
Across 4.8 Census sq mi, Big Stone Gap logged 16.5 property and 1.3 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Big Stone Gap's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (73% of 85 offenses; mix index 5,557).
Violent offenses are only 7% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Big Stone Gap offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (4.8 sq mi); mix index is HHI x 10,000 on the offense-type shares above. Distinct from the per-100K rates in the hero.
| Offense | Count | Rate /100K |
|---|---|---|
| Property Crime | 79 | 1557.9 |
| Larceny-Theft | 62 | 1222.6 |
| Burglary | 11 | 216.9 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 6 | 118.3 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 6 | 118.3 |
| Aggravated Assault | 3 | 59.2 |
| Robbery | 2 | 39.4 |
| Rape | 1 | 19.7 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
Lead series · fell across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · fell · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 5,080 | 137.8 | 1614.2 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 5,055 | 79.1 | 1503.5 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 5,155 | 155.2 | 1784.7 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 5,109 | 156.6 | 1468 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 5,071 | 118.3 | 1557.9 |
Big Stone Gap Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Big Stone Gap's 85 reported offenses (5-year span 2020-2024).
This agency reports via NIBRS, the incident-based system that captures more detail per offense (multiple crimes per incident, victim/offender data) than the older summary counts.
Crime rates read differently at different scales, so these are the Virginia cities closest to Big Stone Gap in population. Their populations run from 4,829 to 5,426, against 5,071 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Big Stone Gap sits at 118.3/100K violent (grade A); the Virginia cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Big Stone Gap reported 6 violent crimes and 79 property crimes, for a total of 85 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Big Stone Gap's violent crime rate decreased by 24.5%, and the property crime rate increased by 6.1%.
The most common crime type in Big Stone Gap is larceny-theft, accounting for 72.9% of all reported crimes (62 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Big Stone Gap is sourced from FBI UCR Table 8 for 2024; rates use that row's population.
Small-city rows use the same per-100,000 formula; a few unreported years can leave gaps in the trend table. Verify the agency's submission on FBI.gov UCR.
Disclaimer (small city): UCR counts here are informational only. They are not a victimization probability. Source: FBI UCR Program.
Small-city rate methodology for how Big Stone Gap's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Big Stone Gap, VA rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Big Stone Gap, VA FBI UCR record to work: compare peers, open the state atlas, or look up another city.
A citywide UCR rate is a starting point, not a neighbourhood verdict: read the full profile and the year coverage notes before drawing conclusions.
Every figure on PlainCrime is rendered directly from FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) source data, no number is typed in by an editor. Big Stone Gap is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (5,071 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.