Chester Township, PA has a D safety grade (32/100) with a violent crime rate of 523 per 100,000, 48% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Chester Township is a small municipal reporter (4,018 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with PA and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Chester Township, PA is among the highest-crime cities in the country, and earns a D PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 48% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Chester Township, PA shows violent crime at 522.6 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,816.8 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 48% above the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade D from those rates. Figures are voluntary agency submissions joined to population denominators; incomplete coverage can move the number.
Small-count caution
Chester Township reported 21 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 4,018. 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 522.6 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Chester Township ranks 38 of 838 — above 800 of the 837 other Pennsylvania cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +700.2% 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.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Chester Township's 522.6 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Warren (519.8), York (530.1), Folcroft (536.0), Ashley (536.8). 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.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 22.3% of the 94 Part I offenses reported in Chester Township for 2024, against a median of 10.0% across comparable Pennsylvania cities — a gap of 12.3 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 709.7 per 100,000 in 2020 to 522.6 in 2024 (-26.4%). The highest observed value was 709.7 in 2020 and the lowest 0.0 in 2021. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 65.8% of reported property offenses in Chester Township, against a cohort median of 85.9%. The remainder is burglary (16) 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 Chester Township'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 21 reported violent incidents in a population of 4,018. 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.
Chester Township leans on larceny-theft at 51% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,253.
Violent offenses are 22% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Chester Township offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (when validated); 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 | 73 | 1816.8 |
| Larceny-Theft | 48 | 1194.6 |
| Burglary | 16 | 398.2 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 9 | 224 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 21 | 522.6 |
| Aggravated Assault | 14 | 348.4 |
| Robbery | 6 | 149.3 |
| Rape | 1 | 24.9 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
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 · rose across 4 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · fell · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 4,086 | 709.7 | 1492.9 |
| 2021 | Insufficient reporting | 4,083 | - | - |
| 2022 | Comparable | 4,010 | 224.4 | 997.5 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 4,009 | 374.2 | 1746.1 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 4,018 | 522.6 | 1816.8 |
Chester Township Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Chester Township's 94 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 Township in population. Their populations run from 3,951 to 4,089, against 4,018 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Chester Township sits at 522.6/100K violent (grade D); the Pennsylvania cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Chester Township reported 21 violent crimes and 73 property crimes, for a total of 94 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Chester Township's violent crime rate increased by 39.7%, and the property crime rate increased by 4%.
The most common crime type in Chester Township is larceny-theft, accounting for 51.1% of all reported crimes (48 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Chester Township 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 Chester Township's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Chester Township, 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 Township, 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 Township is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (4,018 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.