Bluefield, WV has a C safety grade (43/100) with a violent crime rate of 480 per 100,000, 36% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Bluefield is a small municipal reporter (9,163 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with WV and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Bluefield, WV carries a PlainCrime C safety grade with violent crime 36% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Bluefield, WV shows violent crime at 480.2 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,036.8 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 36% above the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade C from those rates. Figures are voluntary agency submissions joined to population denominators; incomplete coverage can move the number.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 31.7% of the 139 Part I offenses reported in Bluefield for 2024, against a median of 9.4% across comparable West Virginia cities — a gap of 22.3 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 1173.6 per 100,000 in 2020 to 480.2 in 2024 (-59.1%). The highest observed value was 1392.0 in 2022 and the lowest 480.2 in 2024. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Bluefield's 480.2 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Elkins (477.6), South Charleston (488.6), Fairmont (520.3), Charleston (542.7). 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 480.2 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Bluefield ranks 10 of 49 — above 39 of the 48 other West Virginia cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +179.9% against the cohort median of 171.6. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 67.4% of reported property offenses in Bluefield, against a cohort median of 86.2%. The remainder is burglary (22) and motor vehicle theft (9). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Property counts dominate Bluefield'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.
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 9 Census sq mi, Bluefield logged 10.6 property and 4.9 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Bluefield leans on larceny-theft at 46% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,135.
Violent offenses are 32% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Bluefield offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (9 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 | 95 | 1036.8 |
| Larceny-Theft | 64 | 698.5 |
| Burglary | 22 | 240.1 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 9 | 98.2 |
| Arson | 1 | 10.9 |
| Violent Crime | 44 | 480.2 |
| Aggravated Assault | 37 | 403.8 |
| Rape | 5 | 54.6 |
| Murder | 1 | 10.9 |
| Robbery | 1 | 10.9 |
Lead series · rose across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · fell · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 9,543 | 1173.6 | 115.3 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 9,416 | 1104.5 | 85 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 9,411 | 1392 | 85 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 9,310 | 1267.5 | 354.5 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 9,163 | 480.2 | 1036.8 |
Bluefield Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Bluefield's 139 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 West Virginia cities closest to Bluefield in population. Their populations run from 6,700 to 10,397, against 9,163 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Bluefield sits at 480.2/100K violent (grade C); the West Virginia cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Bluefield reported 44 violent crimes and 95 property crimes, for a total of 139 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Bluefield's violent crime rate decreased by 62.1%, and the property crime rate increased by 192.5%.
The most common crime type in Bluefield is larceny-theft, accounting for 46.0% of all reported crimes (64 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Bluefield 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 Bluefield's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Bluefield, WV rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Every figure on PlainCrime is rendered directly from FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) source data, no number is typed in by an editor. Bluefield is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (9,163 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.