Walworth County, Wisconsin

How a case moves here

Walworth County follows Wisconsin 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: For most misdemeanors, a police officer or the jail can take cash bail under the statewide misdemeanor bail schedule. For felonies, a circuit court commissioner or circuit judge sets bail at the initial appearance. Wisconsin bars paid bail bondsmen, so sureties must be unpaid people.
Wis. Stat. 969.07 Wis. Stat. 969.065 Wis. Stat. 969.12 Wis. Stat. 757.69(1)(b)Wis. Stat. 968.075(2m), (5)
Time to see a judge: A person who is arrested must be taken before a judge within a reasonable time in the county where the offense is charged. Wisconsin law sets no number of hours.
Wis. Stat. 970.01(1)
Money bail: Wisconsin courts may set cash bail. A surety must be a state resident and an unpaid natural person, so commercial bail bonds are not allowed.
Wis. Stat. 969.12
Courts: The circuit court in each county hears every felony and misdemeanor. Many cities, towns, and villages have a municipal court, but it hears only local ordinance violations punished by fines, not crimes.
Wis. Const. art. VII, secs. 6-7 Wis. Stat. 755.045
Judges and magistrates: Voters elect circuit judges to six-year terms on a ballot with no party label. The chief judge of each judicial district appoints circuit court commissioners, who can hold initial appearances and set bail and must have been licensed lawyers for three years. Municipal judges are elected to terms of up to four years.
Wis. Const. art. VII, sec. 7 Wis. Stat. 5.60(1)Wis. Stat. 757.68 Wis. Stat. 757.69 SCR ch. 75 Wis. Stat. 755.01-.02

Read from the statutes and court rules cited, 2026-09-30. Municipal courts are left out of limited_courts because they hear only ordinance forfeiture cases. wispd.org returned errors, so the defense section rests on statute. Whether municipal judges must be lawyers was not checked; it doesn't affect criminal cases.

What this county does differently

Pretrial practice: Mapping Pretrial Injustice listed its risk tool in 2021 as the Virginia Pretrial Risk Assessment Instrument (VPRAI).
MediaJustice and Movement Alliance Project, Mapping Pretrial Injustice county map (data as of fall 2021)
From Mapping Pretrial Injustice, a map compiled by MediaJustice and the Movement Alliance Project, advocacy groups that campaign against pretrial risk assessment tools. Its data is from fall 2021; CrimeDB uses it only where no court, government, or research list covers the county.

Cities and towns

Whitewater15,807
Burlington10,987
Elkhorn10,221
Delavan8,689
Lake Geneva8,521
Mukwonago village8,415
Geneva town5,440
Delavan town5,216
East Troy village4,978
Bloomfield village4,780
East Troy town4,000
Sugar Creek town3,886
Lyons town3,640
Williams Bay village2,981
Genoa City village2,942
Walworth village2,759
Linn town2,710
Troy town2,626
La Grange town2,565
Bloomfield town2,325
Darien town1,962
Spring Prairie town1,875
Lafayette town1,843
Fontana-on-Geneva Lake village1,737
Walworth town1,717
Richmond town1,680
Sharon village1,592
Whitewater town1,179
Darien village1,126
Sharon town942

Every city, village, town, and township with any of its land in Walworth 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 Walworth County, 2021 to 2025
Offense	2021	2022	2023	2024	2025	Per 100k	Wisconsin
Violent crime	122	108	63	113	156	107	297
Murder	1	1		1	3	Too few for a rate: the count is under 20.	5
Rape	39	35	16	36	41	32	40
Robbery	10	5	5	7	1	5.3	41
Aggravated assault	72	67	42	69	111	69	212
Property crime	726	774	605	743	678	671	1,285
Burglary	62	41	44	57	55	49	143
Larceny	612	682	528	646	594	583	937
Motor vehicle theft	52	51	33	40	29	39	206
Arson	6	3	3	4	3	Too few for a rate: the count is under 20.	7

Outside the crime index

Offenses outside the crime index reported by agencies in Walworth County, 2021 to 2025
Offense	2021	2022	2023	2024	2025	Per 100k	Wisconsin
All offenses outside the crime index	2,520	2,441	2,135	2,521	2,832	2,368	2,474
Simple assault and intimidation	315	352	336	363	373	331	571
Vandalism	393	411	343	335	377	354	422
Fraud	205	163	163	253	281	203	262
Drug abuse violations	1,352	1,269	1,053	1,277	1,515	1,230	834
Weapons: carrying, possessing, etc.	80	73	67	92	89	76	198
Stolen property: buying, receiving, possessing	16	11	13	16	17	14	23
Forgery and counterfeiting	35	42	31	50	37	37	37
Embezzlement	5	1	4	5	2	Too few for a rate: the count is under 20.	12
Sex offenses (except rape and prostitution)	64	54	57	42	45	50	47
Prostitution and commercialized vice	4	3	8	4	9	5.3	4.9
Gambling		1				Too few for a rate: the count is under 20.	0.1
Other Group A offenses	51	61	60	84	87	65	63
Manslaughter by negligence (not in the total)		1	2		1	Too few for a rate: the count is under 20.	1.4
Human trafficking (not in the total)		1			1	Too few for a rate: the count is under 20.	1.8

Offenses agencies in Walworth 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 Wisconsin'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. Wisconsin: 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.