Princeton
City in Mercer County, 5,736 people.
Police
Sheriff in its county: Mercer 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
- Mercer County
- People
- 5,736
- Census Bureau American Community Survey 5-year estimates, 2020 to 2024
How a case moves here
Princeton 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 Princeton Police Department, Princeton'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* | Per 100k | West Virginia |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Violent crime | 23 | 22 | 16 | 5 | 398 | 298 |
| Murder | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 6.5 | ||||
| Rape | 1 | 1 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 57 | ||
| Robbery | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 13 | ||||
| Aggravated assault | 22 | 22 | 15 | 5 | 389 | 222 |
| Property crime | 20 | 20 | 5 | 14 | 354 | 1,331 |
| Burglary | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 219 | ||||
| Larceny | 20 | 20 | 5 | 14 | 354 | 1,002 |
| Motor vehicle theft | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 110 | ||||
| Arson | 1 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 15 |
Outside the crime index
| Offense | 2021 | 2022 | 2023* | 2024* | Per 100k | West Virginia |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All offenses outside the crime index | 171 | 101 | 43 | 47 | 2,408 | 2,147 |
| Simple assault and intimidation | 38 | 39 | 23 | 34 | 682 | 640 |
| Vandalism | 33 | 23 | 9 | 13 | 496 | 364 |
| Drug abuse violations | 96 | 38 | 11 | 1,186 | 705 | |
| Weapons: carrying, possessing, etc. | 4 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 88 | |||
| Sex offenses (except rape and prostitution) | 1 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 33 |
Offenses Princeton 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 2022 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.
* 2023 to 2024: 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.