West Chester, PA has a B safety grade (68/100) with a violent crime rate of 215 per 100,000, 39% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
West Chester (20,004 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then PA and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-09-05
West Chester, PA is higher-crime than most U.S. cities, and earns a B PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 39% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, West Chester, PA shows violent crime at 215 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,249.8 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 39% below the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade B from those rates. Figures are voluntary agency submissions joined to population denominators; incomplete coverage can move the number.
2020–2024 direction
Across 4 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 94.0 per 100,000 in 2020 to 215.0 in 2024 (+128.7%). The highest observed value was 230.2 in 2023 and the lowest 91.0 in 2022. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to West Chester's 215.0 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Lawrence Park Township (215.5), Mount Carmel (214.1), Upper Darby Township (213.8), Whitehall Township (213.1). 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 215.0 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, West Chester ranks 136 of 838 — above 702 of the 837 other Pennsylvania cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +229.1% 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.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 14.7% of the 293 Part I offenses reported in West Chester for 2024, against a median of 10.0% across comparable Pennsylvania cities — a gap of 4.7 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 counts dominate West Chester'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 1.8 Census sq mi, West Chester logged 135.4 property and 23.3 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
West Chester's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (72% of 293 offenses; mix index 5,413).
Violent offenses are only 15% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
West Chester offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (1.8 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 | 250 | 1249.8 |
| Larceny-Theft | 211 | 1054.8 |
| Burglary | 28 | 140 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 11 | 55 |
| Arson | 1 | 5 |
| Violent Crime | 43 | 215 |
| Aggravated Assault | 31 | 155 |
| Robbery | 8 | 40 |
| Rape | 4 | 20 |
| 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 · rose · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 20,211 | 94 | 1103.4 |
| 2021 | Insufficient reporting | 20,214 | - | - |
| 2022 | Comparable | 18,690 | 91 | 711.6 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 19,981 | 230.2 | 1076 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 20,004 | 215 | 1249.8 |
West Chester Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind West Chester's 293 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 West Chester in population. Their populations run from 19,649 to 20,399, against 20,004 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
West Chester sits at 215/100K violent (grade B); the Pennsylvania cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
West Chester at 215/100K violent and 1,249.8/100K property - matched below outside Pennsylvania (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
215/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
1,249.8/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
In 2024, West Chester reported 43 violent crimes and 250 property crimes, for a total of 293 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, West Chester's violent crime rate decreased by 6.6%, and the property crime rate increased by 16.2%.
The most common crime type in West Chester is larceny-theft, accounting for 72.0% of all reported crimes (211 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: West Chester 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 West Chester's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 West Chester, PA rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the West Chester, 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. West Chester is scored in the mid-size municipal band (20,004 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.