Is Crime Up Or Down In Virginia? Here’s What FBI Data Shows

Violent crimes decreased in Virginia last year amid a nationwide plunge in similar cases, according to the latest statistics from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The FBI on Tuesday released 2024 Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) data for more than 14 million criminal offenses across the United States, including in Virginia.

Nationwide, violent crime is down about 4.5 percent from 2023 estimates. That includes drops in murders (14.9 percent), rapes (5.2 percent), robberies (8.9 percent) and aggravated assaults (3 percent). Meanwhile, property crime dropped 8.1 percent last year in the United States, including burglaries (8.6 percent), larcenies (5.5 percent) and vehicle thefts (18.6 percent).

These numbers are the lowest property crime rates and lowest violent crime rates since at least 1969, according to the Center for American Progress.

The FBI noted that despite the reductions, a violent crime still took place every 26 seconds somewhere in America last year.

Virginia reported 19,200 violent crimes with a population of 8,811,195 residents last year, a rate of 217.9 per 100,000 people. That’s down from 21,101 violent crimes in 2023, or 241.6 per 100,000 people.

The state’s violent crime totals were below the national violent crime rate, which came to 359.1 per 100,000 people.

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Virginia experienced 138,307 property crimes last year, a rate of roughly 1,570 per 100,000 people. The statewide total is down from 145,881 property crimes in 2023, or 1,670 per 100,000 people.

Again, Virginia was below the national property crime rate of 1,760 per 100,000 residents.

Here are some previous years of crime statistics in Virginia for comparison:

2022

• Violent: 20,624 (237.5 per 100,000)
• Property: 148,845 (1,714 per 100,000)

2021

• Violent: 19,526 (225.5 per 100,000)
• Property: 125,478 (1,449.4 per 100,000)

2020

• Violent: 17,925 (208.7 per 100,000)
• Property: 125,114 (1,456.4 per 100,000)

2019

• Violent: 17,916 (209.4 per 100,000)
• Property: 140,944 (1,647.2 per 100,000)

2018

• Violent: 17,357 (204.2 per 100,000)
• Property: 142,931 (1,681.3 per 100,000)

2017

• Violent: 17,811 (210.4 per 100,000)
• Property: 152,515 (1,801.7 per 100,000)

2016

• Violent: 18,495 (219.8 per 100,000)
• Property: 157,292 (1,869.3 per 100,000)

2015

• Violent: 16,705 (199.6 per 100,000)
• Property: 157,803 (1,886 per 100,000)

In Virginia, aggravated assaults made up a majority of violent crimes committed in the state. In 2023, 13,413 aggravated assaults were reported, down from 14,462 in 2023. Robberies followed with 3,332reported to the FBI.

Larceny was the most reported property crime in 2024 at 115,949 cases, down from 120,084 in 2023.

The UCR program was rolled out in 1930. Nonfederal law enforcement agencies from across the country voluntarily submit their crime and law enforcement data to the program. The FBI publishes the contributed data on its Crime Data Explorer website.

More than 16,000 state, county, city, university and college and tribal agencies – covering a combined 95.6 percent of the United States population – submitted data to the UCR program through the National Incident-Based Reporting System and the Summary Reporting System last year.

Some politicians and commentators have argued that the FBI data may be fraudulent, manipulated or incomplete. However, civil rights advocacy groups such as the Brennan Center for Justice have disputed those claims.

Local Trends In Northern Virginia

Overall crime in the Washington, DC region decreased 13 percent in the first four months of 2025 compared with the same period in 2024, according to a new data dashboard created by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.

During the same period, all categories of crimes against people and property showed declines regionwide, including robbery (32 percent), homicide (30 percent), rape 23 percent) and aggravated assault (21 percent).

The regional crime dashboard is the first unified, near real-time dashboard for D.C., Maryland and Virginia that aggregates and displays recent crime data from 24 local jurisdictions.

According to the dashboard, as of July 2025, Washington, D.C. has recorded the most crimes this year at 2,111, or 3 per every 1,000 residents. Fairfax County follows the District with 1,183 crimes, or 1.2 per 1,000 residents.

Crime in 2025 has been lowest in Loudoun County at 176 reports, followed by the City of Alexandria with 328.

Patch editor Eric Kiefer contributed reporting.