Elkins, WV has a C safety grade (49/100) with a violent crime rate of 478 per 100,000, 36% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Elkins is a small municipal reporter (6,700 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with WV and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Elkins, 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, Elkins, WV shows violent crime at 477.6 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 403 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 71.7 per 100,000 in 2020 to 477.6 in 2024 (+565.8%). The highest observed value was 934.6 in 2023 and the lowest 14.5 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 54.2% of the 59 Part I offenses reported in Elkins for 2024, against a median of 9.4% across comparable West Virginia cities — a gap of 44.9 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 Elkins's 477.6 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Bluefield (480.2), 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 477.6 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Elkins ranks 11 of 49 — above 38 of the 48 other West Virginia cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +178.4% 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 74.1% of reported property offenses in Elkins, against a cohort median of 86.2%. The remainder is burglary (5) and motor vehicle theft (2). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Elkins's FBI UCR Table 8 municipal row keeps violent and property totals in a closer balance. Per-100,000 rates use the reporting-year population on that row; incomplete reporters 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 3.7 Census sq mi, Elkins logged 7.3 property and 8.7 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Elkins leans on aggravated assault at 53% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,996.
Violent offenses are 54% of the municipal total - a violence-heavy book for a small city.
Elkins offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (3.7 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Violent Crime | 32 | 477.6 |
| Aggravated Assault | 31 | 462.7 |
| Robbery | 1 | 14.9 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
| Rape | 0 | 0 |
| Property Crime | 27 | 403 |
| Larceny-Theft | 20 | 298.5 |
| Burglary | 5 | 74.6 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 2 | 29.9 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
Lead series · rose across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · rose · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 6,970 | 71.7 | 28.7 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 6,881 | 14.5 | 29.1 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 6,865 | 145.7 | 58.3 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 6,741 | 934.6 | 875.2 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 6,700 | 477.6 | 403 |
Elkins Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Elkins's 59 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 Elkins in population. Their populations run from 5,014 to 8,103, against 6,700 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Elkins sits at 477.6/100K violent (grade C); the West Virginia cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Elkins reported 32 violent crimes and 27 property crimes, for a total of 59 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Elkins's violent crime rate decreased by 48.9%, and the property crime rate decreased by 54%.
The most common crime type in Elkins is aggravated assault, accounting for 52.5% of all reported crimes (31 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Elkins 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 Elkins's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Elkins, 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. Elkins is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (6,700 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.