Aiken County, South Carolina

How a case moves here

Aiken County follows South Carolina law on arrests, release, and courts. These rules are the same in every county in the state; the full set covers prosecutors, defense, and jails too.

Who decides release first: A magistrate, or a municipal judge for city charges, sets bond at a hearing within 24 hours of arrest. Magistrates need not be lawyers. A magistrate can't set bail on a charge punishable by death or life in prison; a circuit judge does.
S.C. Code 22-5-510 S.C. Code 17-15-10 and following
Time to see a judge: A person charged with a bailable offense must have a bond hearing within 24 hours of arrest, and the jail must release the person within four hours after the bond is delivered.
S.C. Code 22-5-510(B)
Money bail: Magistrates and judges may set cash or surety bonds. A person charged with a new violent offense while out on bond for one loses the first bond, and any new bond must be paid in full cash.
S.C. Code 17-15-10, 17-15-15, 17-15-55
Courts: The circuit court, sitting as the Court of General Sessions, tries felonies and the more serious misdemeanors. Magistrate courts in each county try crimes punished by up to 30 days in jail or a $500 fine, and municipal courts try similar crimes and ordinance violations inside city limits.
S.C. Code 22-3-540, 22-3-550 S.C. Const. art. V, sec. 13
Judges and magistrates: The General Assembly elects circuit judges by a joint vote for six-year terms. The governor appoints magistrates, with the Senate's consent, for four-year terms. Magistrates appointed since 2005 need a four-year college degree and must pass a certification exam, but need not be lawyers.
S.C. Const. art. V, sec. 13 S.C. Code 22-1-10

Read from the statutes and court rules cited, 2026-09-30. Magistrates are called summary court judges, so setter_is_judge is "yes" though they need not be lawyers. Whether municipal or magistrate courts use a bail schedule for minor offenses was not found. How many counties have moved the jail from the sheriff to the county government was not counted.

What this county does differently

Nothing county-specific yet

Whether Aiken County runs a pretrial services office, uses a risk assessment, or has its own bail schedule appears here once a cited source says so.

Cities and towns

Every city, village, town, and township with any of its land in Aiken County, largest first. Population, the whole place's: Census Bureau American Community Survey 5-year estimates, 2020 to 2024.

Police agencies

Agencies: FBI NIBRS master file 2025 batch headers; names from the FBI agency list, pulled 2026-09-29. An agency that serves several counties appears on each. Population served is the FBI's figure.

Crime

The crime index

Crime index offenses reported by agencies in Aiken County, 2021 to 2025
Offense	2021	2022	2023	2024	2025	Per 100k	South Carolina
Violent crime	609	604	484	515	524	309	460
Murder	26	22	17	12	13	10	8.9
Rape	73	72	63	54	67	37	39
Robbery	75	52	46	45	30	28	38
Aggravated assault	435	458	358	404	414	234	373
Property crime	4,153	3,897	4,133	3,643	3,390	2,171	2,130
Burglary	642	579	622	578	485	328	319
Larceny	2,968	2,875	3,072	2,698	2,554	1,600	1,578
Motor vehicle theft	543	443	439	367	351	242	234
Arson	21	17	30	20	20	12	12

Outside the crime index

Offenses outside the crime index reported by agencies in Aiken County, 2021 to 2025
Offense	2021	2022	2023	2024	2025	Per 100k	South Carolina
All offenses outside the crime index	6,160	6,517	6,593	5,802	5,597	3,465	3,684
Simple assault and intimidation	2,190	2,349	2,429	2,249	2,262	1,297	1,319
Vandalism	1,399	1,258	1,438	1,226	1,052	720	606
Fraud	721	900	908	757	806	462	437
Drug abuse violations	1,109	1,237	1,008	1,025	998	607	892
Weapons: carrying, possessing, etc.	260	295	307	197	179	140	176
Stolen property: buying, receiving, possessing	119	121	91	81	60	53	69
Forgery and counterfeiting	151	186	240	167	82	93	72
Embezzlement	13	13	21	5	10	7	15
Sex offenses (except rape and prostitution)	117	89	82	39	73	45	34
Prostitution and commercialized vice		2	1		2	Too few for a rate: the count is under 20.	2.4
Other Group A offenses	81	67	68	56	73	39	60
Manslaughter by negligence (not in the total)		2				Too few for a rate: the count is under 20.	0.5
Human trafficking (not in the total)	3	7	1	2	3	Too few for a rate: the count is under 20.	0.7

Offenses agencies in Aiken County reported to the FBI in incident detail (NIBRS), each year, the second table by the arrest class each offense falls in. Per 100k: offenses per 100,000 people the reporting agencies police, 2021 to 2025 added together, beside South Carolina's rate over the same years. Agencies that reported part of a year are counted with their people, as the state's rates count them. – means too few for a rate: the count is under 20.

Source: FBI NIBRS national master files, each agency's offenses and the FBI's population for it. South Carolina: the crime index: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting, CrimeDB's chosen value per year (the state page's figures); outside it: FBI NIBRS, agencies that sent incident detail.