Parkersburg
City in Wood County, 29,240 people.
Police
Sheriff in its county: Wood County Sheriff's Office.
A department is the place's own when its name is the place's and its FBI population fits the place's people (decision city-or-town-is-its-police-department). Agencies: FBI NIBRS master file 2025 batch headers; names from the FBI agency list, pulled 2026-09-29.
Where it sits
- County
- Wood County
- People
- 29,240
- Census Bureau American Community Survey 5-year estimates, 2020 to 2024
How a case moves here
Parkersburg 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 Parkersburg Police Department, Parkersburg'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 | 131 | 135 | 77 | 75 | 77 | 343 | 277 |
| Murder | 1 | 5 | 3 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 5.9 | ||
| Rape | 26 | 26 | 21 | 19 | 21 | 78 | 56 |
| Robbery | 16 | 9 | 11 | 6 | 5 | 33 | 12 |
| Aggravated assault | 88 | 95 | 45 | 50 | 48 | 226 | 203 |
| Property crime | 1,180 | 1,044 | 1,070 | 958 | 707 | 3,435 | 1,213 |
| Burglary | 158 | 112 | 114 | 86 | 59 | 366 | 193 |
| Larceny | 922 | 858 | 887 | 824 | 615 | 2,844 | 927 |
| Motor vehicle theft | 100 | 74 | 69 | 48 | 33 | 224 | 93 |
| Arson | 31 | 23 | 20 | 10 | 11 | 66 | 12 |
Outside the crime index
| Offense | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | Per 100k | West Virginia |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All offenses outside the crime index | 1,332 | 1,393 | 1,203 | 1,084 | 969 | 4,142 | 2,075 |
| Simple assault and intimidation | 392 | 477 | 359 | 351 | 340 | 1,329 | 680 |
| Vandalism | 323 | 284 | 282 | 270 | 215 | 952 | 327 |
| Fraud | 147 | 141 | 138 | 138 | 113 | 469 | 162 |
| Drug abuse violations | 347 | 360 | 309 | 234 | 214 | 1,014 | 646 |
| Weapons: carrying, possessing, etc. | 31 | 25 | 20 | 26 | 16 | 82 | 84 |
| Stolen property: buying, receiving, possessing | 24 | 22 | 13 | 11 | 15 | 59 | 39 |
| Forgery and counterfeiting | 38 | 20 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 84 | 41 |
| Embezzlement | 3 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 19 | 8.6 |
| Sex offenses (except rape and prostitution) | 6 | 10 | 9 | 17 | 12 | 37 | 33 |
| Prostitution and commercialized vice | 2 | 3 | 1 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 3.1 | ||
| Other Group A offenses | 19 | 45 | 47 | 10 | 15 | 94 | 51 |
| Manslaughter by negligence (not in the total) | 2 | 1 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 1 |
Offenses Parkersburg 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 2025 added together, beside West Virginia's rate over the same years. – 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. 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.