County crime profile · 2024 · very large county · property-led
Kern County, CA
At 909,235 residents, Kern County is a very large county in California. FBI UCR county totals below are read before any per-100,000 rate (Census denominator when matched).
Kern County, CA reported 348 violent crimes per 100,000 in FBI UCR 2024
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Kern County, CA agencies reported 3,160 violent and 7,085 property offenses. That equals about 348 violent and 779 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
3,160 violent offenses
348/100K violent rate
What the 2024 FBI UCR record shows for Kern County, CA
Position in the state cohort
Kern County reported a higher violent-crime rate than most comparable California counties
At 347.5 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Kern County ranks 11 of 56 — above 45 of the 55 other California counties whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test and carries a matched Census denominator. That is +198.5% against the cohort median of 116.4. Counties that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Property-offense composition
Burglary and vehicle theft carry more of the property total than they do across the cohort
Larceny-theft is 44.5% of reported property offenses in Kern County, against a cohort median of 66.2%. The remainder is burglary (1,738) and motor vehicle theft (2,192). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
2020–2024 direction
The reported violent-crime rate ended the window lower
Across 4 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 370.5 per 100,000 in 2020 to 347.5 in 2024 (-6.2%). The highest observed value was 389.0 in 2022 and the lowest 347.5 in 2024. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
On a very 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 · very large county
Category
Count
Property Crime
7,085
Burglary
1,738
Larceny-Theft
3,155
Motor Vehicle Theft
2,192
Arson
271
Violent Crime
3,160
Murder
40
Rape
177
Robbery
353
Aggravated Assault
2,590
Reporting Agency
Kern County Sheriff's Office NIBRS-participating
Kern County's crime figures on this page originate from Kern 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 California
A per-capita rate is easiest to read against places of similar scale, so these are the California counties closest to Kern County in population. Their populations run from 764,442 to 1,165,927, against 909,235 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.