Portsmouth, VA has a F safety grade (0/100) with a violent crime rate of 752 per 100,000, 114% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · large city
At 97,156 residents, Portsmouth 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 2026-09-05
Portsmouth, VA is among the highest-crime cities in the country, and earns an F PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 114% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Portsmouth, VA shows violent crime at 752.4 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 3,860.8 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 114% 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 752.4 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Portsmouth ranks 3 of 125 — above 122 of the 124 other Virginia cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +298.7% 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 Portsmouth's 752.4 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Newport News (736.0), 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 922.5 per 100,000 in 2020 to 752.4 in 2024 (-18.4%). The highest observed value was 922.5 in 2020 and the lowest 752.4 in 2024. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 16.3% of the 4,482 Part I offenses reported in Portsmouth for 2024, against a median of 10.4% across comparable Virginia cities — a gap of 5.9 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.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 75.6% of reported property offenses in Portsmouth, against a cohort median of 86.7%. The remainder is burglary (412) and motor vehicle theft (502). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Property counts dominate Portsmouth'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 33.3 Census sq mi, Portsmouth logged 112.6 property and 22 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Portsmouth's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (63% of 4,482 offenses; mix index 4,354).
Violent offenses are 16% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Portsmouth offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (33.3 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 | 3,751 | 3860.8 |
| Larceny-Theft | 2,837 | 2920 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 502 | 516.7 |
| Burglary | 412 | 424.1 |
| Arson | 2 | 2.1 |
| Violent Crime | 731 | 752.4 |
| Aggravated Assault | 497 | 511.5 |
| Robbery | 163 | 167.8 |
| Murder | 36 | 37.1 |
| Rape | 35 | 36 |
Lead series · fell across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · fell · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 94,205 | 922.5 | 4565.6 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 94,943 | 767.8 | 3842.3 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 98,003 | 875.5 | 4902.9 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 96,649 | 832.9 | 4700.5 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 97,156 | 752.4 | 3860.8 |
Portsmouth Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Portsmouth's 4,482 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 Portsmouth in population. Their populations run from 44,844 to 138,100, against 97,156 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Portsmouth sits at 752.4/100K violent (grade F); the Virginia cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Portsmouth at 752.4/100K violent and 3,860.8/100K property - matched below outside Virginia (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
752.4/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
3,860.8/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (-9.7% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Portsmouth reported 731 violent crimes and 3,751 property crimes, for a total of 4,482 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Portsmouth's violent crime rate decreased by 9.7%, and the property crime rate decreased by 17.9%.
The most common crime type in Portsmouth is larceny-theft, accounting for 63.3% of all reported crimes (2,837 incidents in 2024).
Large-city read: Portsmouth'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 Portsmouth's large city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Portsmouth, VA rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Portsmouth, 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. Portsmouth is scored here as a large city UCR reporter (97,156 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.