Chester, PA has a F safety grade (13/100) with a violent crime rate of 831 per 100,000, 136% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Chester (33,944 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then PA and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Chester, PA is among the highest-crime cities in the country, and earns an F PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 136% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Chester, PA shows violent crime at 830.8 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,988.6 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 136% above the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade F from those rates. Figures are voluntary agency submissions joined to population denominators; incomplete coverage can move the number.
Position in the state cohort
At 830.8 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Chester ranks 14 of 838 — above 824 of the 837 other Pennsylvania cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +1171.9% against the cohort median of 65.3. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 29.5% of the 957 Part I offenses reported in Chester for 2024, against a median of 10.0% across comparable Pennsylvania cities — a gap of 19.5 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.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Chester's 830.8 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Darby (831.3), Plymouth (834.1), Steelton (838.3), Arnold (839.8). 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.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 62.5% of reported property offenses in Chester, against a cohort median of 85.9%. The remainder is burglary (113) and motor vehicle theft (140). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
2020–2024 direction
Across 4 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 1108.6 per 100,000 in 2020 to 830.8 in 2024 (-25.1%). The highest observed value was 1168.3 in 2023 and the lowest 420.0 in 2022. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property counts dominate Chester'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.
Mid-size municipal totals above are reported offenses, not safety advice for any single block. Reporting completeness still varies by year and agency.
Across 4.8 Census sq mi, Chester logged 139.7 property and 58.3 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Chester leans on larceny-theft at 44% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 2,692.
Violent offenses are 29% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Chester 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 | 675 | 1988.6 |
| Larceny-Theft | 422 | 1243.2 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 140 | 412.4 |
| Burglary | 113 | 332.9 |
| Arson | 2 | 5.9 |
| Violent Crime | 282 | 830.8 |
| Aggravated Assault | 176 | 518.5 |
| Robbery | 66 | 194.4 |
| Murder | 20 | 58.9 |
| Rape | 20 | 58.9 |
The chart omits 2021 rather than drawing an unsupported zero or partial-coverage dip. The table preserves the year and marks the gap.
Lead series · fell across 4 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · fell · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 34,007 | 1108.6 | 2226 |
| 2021 | Insufficient reporting | 33,669 | - | - |
| 2022 | Comparable | 32,382 | 420 | 1151.9 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 33,894 | 1168.3 | 2136.1 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 33,944 | 830.8 | 1988.6 |
Chester Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Chester's 957 reported offenses (4-year span 2020-2024, with internal gaps).
This agency reports via the traditional Summary Reporting System (SRS): aggregate monthly offense counts rather than incident-level detail.
Crime rates read differently at different scales, so these are the Pennsylvania cities closest to Chester in population. Their populations run from 32,585 to 35,576, against 33,944 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Chester sits at 830.8/100K violent (grade F); the Pennsylvania cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Chester at 830.8/100K violent and 1,988.6/100K property - matched below outside Pennsylvania (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
830.8/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
1,988.6/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (-28.9% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Chester reported 282 violent crimes and 675 property crimes, for a total of 957 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Chester's violent crime rate decreased by 28.9%, and the property crime rate decreased by 6.9%.
The most common crime type in Chester is larceny-theft, accounting for 44.1% of all reported crimes (422 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Chester figures are FBI UCR CIUS Table 8 (vintage 2024), population-adjusted per 100,000.
Denominators are the reporting-year population on the municipal row. Incomplete years are dropped from rankings. Confirm at FBI Crime Data Explorer and Census.gov QuickFacts.
Disclaimer (mid-size municipal): figures are informational, not advice. FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program is the source. Consult a professional before decisions.
Mid-size rate methodology for how Chester's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Chester, PA rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Chester, PA 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. Chester is scored in the mid-size municipal band (33,944 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.