Petersburg, VA has a F safety grade (5/100) with a violent crime rate of 1044 per 100,000, 196% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Petersburg (33,538 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then VA and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Petersburg, VA is among the highest-crime cities in the country, and earns an F PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 196% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Petersburg, VA shows violent crime at 1,043.6 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 2,889.3 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 196% 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 1043.6 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Petersburg ranks 2 of 125 — above 123 of the 124 other Virginia cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +452.9% 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 Petersburg's 1043.6 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Emporia (1068.9), Portsmouth (752.4), Newport News (736.0), Roanoke (620.4). 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 26.5% of the 1,319 Part I offenses reported in Petersburg for 2024, against a median of 10.4% across comparable Virginia cities — a gap of 16.2 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 740.5 per 100,000 in 2020 to 1043.6 in 2024 (+40.9%). The highest observed value was 1043.6 in 2024 and the lowest 700.1 in 2023. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 75.6% of reported property offenses in Petersburg, against a cohort median of 86.7%. The remainder is burglary (96) and motor vehicle theft (140). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Property counts dominate Petersburg'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 22.7 Census sq mi, Petersburg logged 42.6 property and 15.4 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Petersburg leans on larceny-theft at 56% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,718.
Violent offenses are 27% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Petersburg offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (22.7 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Property Crime | 969 | 2889.3 |
| Larceny-Theft | 733 | 2185.6 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 140 | 417.4 |
| Burglary | 96 | 286.2 |
| Arson | 5 | 14.9 |
| Violent Crime | 350 | 1043.6 |
| Aggravated Assault | 281 | 837.9 |
| Robbery | 33 | 98.4 |
| Rape | 21 | 62.6 |
| Murder | 15 | 44.7 |
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 | 31,195 | 740.5 | 2776.1 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 30,212 | 781.1 | 2452.7 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 33,546 | 825.7 | 2605.4 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 33,424 | 700.1 | 3410.7 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 33,538 | 1043.6 | 2889.3 |
Petersburg Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Petersburg's 1,319 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 Petersburg in population. Their populations run from 23,673 to 43,028, against 33,538 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Petersburg sits at 1,043.6/100K violent (grade F); the Virginia cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Petersburg at 1,043.6/100K violent and 2,889.3/100K property - matched below outside Virginia (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
1,043.6/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
2,889.3/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (+49.1% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Petersburg reported 350 violent crimes and 969 property crimes, for a total of 1,319 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Petersburg's violent crime rate increased by 49.1%, and the property crime rate decreased by 15.3%.
The most common crime type in Petersburg is larceny-theft, accounting for 55.6% of all reported crimes (733 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Petersburg 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 Petersburg's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Petersburg, VA rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Petersburg, VA 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. Petersburg is scored in the mid-size municipal band (33,538 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.