Newport News, VA has a F safety grade (9/100) with a violent crime rate of 736 per 100,000, 109% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · large city
At 183,563 residents, Newport News is a large city: FBI UCR Table 8 rates (per 100,000) here are read against VA and U.S. averages before the offense-family breakdown.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Newport News, VA carries a PlainCrime F safety grade with violent crime 109% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Newport News, VA shows violent crime at 736 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 2,416.1 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 109% 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 736.0 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Newport News ranks 4 of 125 — above 121 of the 124 other Virginia cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +290.0% against the cohort median of 188.7. 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 Newport News's 736.0 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Portsmouth (752.4), Roanoke (620.4), Fredericksburg (603.9), Ashland (594.7). 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.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 23.3% of the 5,786 Part I offenses reported in Newport News for 2024, against a median of 10.4% across comparable Virginia cities — a gap of 13.0 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 632.8 per 100,000 in 2020 to 736.0 in 2024 (+16.3%). The highest observed value was 882.4 in 2023 and the lowest 624.8 in 2022. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property counts dominate Newport News'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.
On a large city row, these are citywide reported offense totals - not neighbourhood advice. Conditions vary by place and time; reporting rates differ across jurisdictions.
Across 69 Census sq mi, Newport News logged 64.3 property and 19.6 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Newport News's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (61% of 5,786 offenses; mix index 4,182).
Violent offenses are 23% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Newport News offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (69 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 | 4,435 | 2416.1 |
| Larceny-Theft | 3,504 | 1908.9 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 524 | 285.5 |
| Burglary | 407 | 221.7 |
| Arson | 39 | 21.2 |
| Violent Crime | 1,351 | 736 |
| Aggravated Assault | 1,120 | 610.1 |
| Robbery | 156 | 85 |
| Rape | 53 | 28.9 |
| Murder | 22 | 12 |
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 | 178,896 | 632.8 | 2074.9 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 178,662 | 667.2 | 2020 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 183,903 | 624.8 | 2311.5 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 183,600 | 882.4 | 2545.2 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 183,563 | 736 | 2416.1 |
Newport News Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Newport News's 5,786 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 Newport News in population. Their populations run from 97,027 to 257,248, against 183,563 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Newport News sits at 736/100K violent (grade F); the Virginia cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Newport News at 736/100K violent and 2,416.1/100K property - matched below outside Virginia (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
736/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
2,416.1/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (-16.6% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Newport News reported 1,351 violent crimes and 4,435 property crimes, for a total of 5,786 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Newport News's violent crime rate decreased by 16.6%, and the property crime rate decreased by 5.1%.
The most common crime type in Newport News is larceny-theft, accounting for 60.6% of all reported crimes (3,504 incidents in 2024).
Large-city read: Newport News's rates come from the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, CIUS Table 8, vintage 2024.
Incomplete reporters stay out of rate rankings. Cross-check population with Census ACS; state UCR programs for statewide context. Primary verify links: FBI.gov UCR, Census QuickFacts.
Disclaimer (large city): informational crime rates only - not legal, insurance, or personal-safety advice. Source: FBI UCR. Ask a qualified professional before acting.
Large-city rate methodology for how Newport News's large city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Newport News, VA 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. Newport News is scored here as a large city UCR reporter (183,563 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.