Charleston
City in Kanawha County, 47,421 people.
Police
Sheriff in its county: Kanawha County Sheriff's Office.
A department or FBI code is the place's own when its name is the place's and its FBI population fits the place's people (decisions city-or-town-is-its-police-department, left-out-code-is-its-place). Agencies: FBI NIBRS master file 2025 batch headers; names from the FBI agency list, pulled 2026-09-29.
Where it sits
- County
- Kanawha County
- People
- 47,421
- Census Bureau American Community Survey 5-year estimates, 2020 to 2024
How a case moves here
Charleston follows West Virginia law on arrests, release, and courts; the full set covers prosecutors, defense, and jails too.
- Who decides release first
A county magistrate sets bail first, with an on-call magistrate for arrests after hours. Magistrates need not be lawyers. Only the circuit court can release a person charged with an offense punishable by life in prison.
W. Va. Code 62-1C-1W. Va. Code 62-1-5- Time to see a judge
An officer must take an arrested person "without unnecessary delay" before a magistrate of the county where the arrest happened. The law sets no number of hours.
W. Va. Code 62-1-5(a)(1)- Money bail
Magistrates and judges may set money bail.
W. Va. Code 62-1C-1
Read from the statutes and court rules cited, 2026-09-30. Some of this is medium confidence and still being checked. The name of the Supreme Court-approved risk instrument was not found. Whether jailers release on a bail schedule without a magistrate was not found.
Crime
Offenses reported by Charleston Police Department, Charleston's own department. The county sheriff and state police may answer calls here too; their offenses are on their own pages.
The crime index
| Offense | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024* | 2025* | Per 100k | West Virginia |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Violent crime | 326 | 323 | 284 | 251 | 252 | 671 | 293 |
| Murder | 10 | 10 | 6 | 6 | 3 | 19 | 6.3 |
| Rape | 34 | 45 | 49 | 27 | 27 | 92 | 56 |
| Robbery | 45 | 39 | 35 | 25 | 34 | 86 | 13 |
| Aggravated assault | 237 | 229 | 194 | 193 | 188 | 474 | 218 |
| Property crime | 1,876 | 2,179 | 1,809 | 1,461 | 1,654 | 4,215 | 1,297 |
| Burglary | 376 | 447 | 352 | 269 | 282 | 845 | 210 |
| Larceny | 1,336 | 1,575 | 1,321 | 1,109 | 1,292 | 3,042 | 981 |
| Motor vehicle theft | 164 | 157 | 136 | 83 | 80 | 328 | 106 |
| Arson | 18 | 30 | 20 | 13 | 7 | 49 | 14 |
Outside the crime index
| Offense | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024* | 2025* | Per 100k | West Virginia |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All offenses outside the crime index | 2,639 | 2,914 | 2,796 | 1,811 | 2,201 | 6,001 | 2,157 |
| Simple assault and intimidation | 889 | 1,033 | 1,067 | 689 | 769 | 2,149 | 673 |
| Vandalism | 518 | 554 | 511 | 346 | 355 | 1,138 | 360 |
| Fraud | 225 | 219 | 241 | 153 | 160 | 492 | 168 |
| Drug abuse violations | 605 | 720 | 612 | 395 | 643 | 1,392 | 689 |
| Weapons: carrying, possessing, etc. | 217 | 172 | 168 | 114 | 125 | 400 | 87 |
| Stolen property: buying, receiving, possessing | 47 | 41 | 38 | 30 | 34 | 91 | 41 |
| Forgery and counterfeiting | 48 | 60 | 55 | 26 | 27 | 117 | 44 |
| Embezzlement | 6 | 10 | 13 | 12 | 15 | 21 | 8.4 |
| Sex offenses (except rape and prostitution) | 15 | 16 | 20 | 12 | 7 | 37 | 32 |
| Prostitution and commercialized vice | 33 | 47 | 31 | 10 | 31 | 80 | 3.4 |
| Other Group A offenses | 36 | 42 | 40 | 24 | 35 | 85 | 51 |
| Manslaughter by negligence (not in the total) | 1 | 1 | 1 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 1 |
Offenses Charleston Police Department 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 department polices, 2021 to 2023 added together, full years only, beside West Virginia's rate over the same years. – means too few for a rate: the count is under 20.
* 2024 to 2025: reported for part of the year only, so the count is short and the year is left out of the rate.
Source: FBI NIBRS national master files, each agency's offenses and the FBI's population for it. West Virginia: 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.