County crime profile · 2024 · large county · property-led
Kanawha County, WV
At 180,745 residents, Kanawha County is a large county in West Virginia. FBI UCR county totals below are read before any per-100,000 rate (Census denominator when matched).
Kanawha County, WV reported 151 violent crimes per 100,000 in FBI UCR 2024
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Kanawha County, WV agencies reported 273 violent and 982 property offenses. That equals about 151 violent and 543 property crimes per 100,000 using a verified Census population join. Table 10 coverage is a voluntary subset of U.S. counties.
2024 UCR year
273 violent offenses
151/100K violent rate
What the 2024 FBI UCR record shows for Kanawha County, WV
Position in the state cohort
Kanawha County reported a higher violent-crime rate than most comparable West Virginia counties
At 151.0 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Kanawha County ranks 7 of 32 — above 25 of the 31 other West Virginia counties whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test and carries a matched Census denominator. That is +140.2% against the cohort median of 62.9. Counties that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
2020–2024 direction
The reported violent-crime rate ended the window lower
Across 4 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 244.0 per 100,000 in 2020 to 151.0 in 2024 (-38.1%). The highest observed value was 244.0 in 2020 and the lowest 151.0 in 2024. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Share of the state cohort
Kanawha County carries a large share of the reporting cohort’s total offenses
The 1,255 Part I offenses reported here are 20.3% of the 6,184 reported across all 32 comparable West Virginia counties in 2024. A county this large moves the statewide total on its own, so state-level changes should be read against its population of 180,745 rather than as a uniform shift.
Property-offense composition
Burglary and vehicle theft carry more of the property total than they do across the cohort
Larceny-theft is 60.7% of reported property offenses in Kanawha County, against a cohort median of 72.3%. The remainder is burglary (236) and motor vehicle theft (150). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Offense mix
Violent offenses make up an unusually large share of the reported mix
Violent offenses are 21.8% of the 1,255 Part I offenses reported in Kanawha County for 2024, against a median of 18.7% across comparable West Virginia counties — a gap of 3.0 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.
On a large county row, county figures aggregate every participating agency inside the county. Participation is voluntary. Per-100,000 rates use a separately matched 2020 U.S. Census county population, never a Table 10 field; unmatched counties stay count-only. A large county line encloses very different communities.
Crime Breakdown (2024) · property-led · large county
Category
Count
Property Crime
982
Burglary
236
Larceny-Theft
596
Motor Vehicle Theft
150
Arson
19
Violent Crime
273
Murder
6
Rape
33
Robbery
3
Aggravated Assault
231
Reporting Agency
Kanawha County Sheriff's Office NIBRS-participating
Kanawha County's crime figures on this page originate from Kanawha County Sheriff's Office's submission to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program.
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.
Similar-Size Counties in West Virginia
A per-capita rate is easiest to read against places of similar scale, so these are the West Virginia counties closest to Kanawha County in population. Their populations run from 74,591 to 122,076, against 180,745 here. Or launch the
side-by-side compare tool
to benchmark two jurisdictions directly.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, Crime in the United States (CIUS) Table 10.
FBI Table 10 supplies county offense counts but no resident population. Where this page shows a per-100,000 rate, the denominator is a separately matched 2020 U.S. Census Bureau county population; unmatched county rows remain count-only. Statewide comparisons draw on the state UCR program. Verify with FBI.gov UCR and Census.gov QuickFacts.