South Charleston
City in Kanawha County, 13,457 people.
Police
Sheriff in its county: Kanawha 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
- Kanawha County
- People
- 13,457
- Census Bureau American Community Survey 5-year estimates, 2020 to 2024
How a case moves here
South 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 South Charleston Police Department, South 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 | 53 | 84 | 74 | 64 | 58 | 520 | 277 |
| Murder | 1 | 5 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 5.9 | |||
| Rape | 5 | 6 | 3 | 6 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 56 | |
| Robbery | 2 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 1 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 12 |
| Aggravated assault | 46 | 74 | 65 | 58 | 51 | 459 | 203 |
| Property crime | 614 | 630 | 608 | 738 | 714 | 5,156 | 1,213 |
| Burglary | 55 | 41 | 37 | 35 | 45 | 332 | 193 |
| Larceny | 529 | 564 | 552 | 680 | 653 | 4,647 | 927 |
| Motor vehicle theft | 30 | 25 | 19 | 23 | 16 | 176 | 93 |
| Arson | 3 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 12 |
Outside the crime index
| Offense | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | Per 100k | West Virginia |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All offenses outside the crime index | 535 | 549 | 634 | 543 | 498 | 4,305 | 2,075 |
| Simple assault and intimidation | 107 | 131 | 172 | 179 | 144 | 1,144 | 680 |
| Vandalism | 107 | 79 | 97 | 70 | 68 | 657 | 327 |
| Fraud | 52 | 42 | 44 | 32 | 23 | 301 | 162 |
| Drug abuse violations | 163 | 203 | 225 | 158 | 170 | 1,434 | 646 |
| Weapons: carrying, possessing, etc. | 33 | 35 | 27 | 23 | 33 | 236 | 84 |
| Stolen property: buying, receiving, possessing | 18 | 13 | 12 | 22 | 23 | 137 | 39 |
| Forgery and counterfeiting | 47 | 37 | 44 | 45 | 28 | 314 | 41 |
| Embezzlement | 3 | 4 | 7 | 1 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 8.6 | |
| Sex offenses (except rape and prostitution) | 1 | 4 | 2 | 4 | 1 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 33 |
| Other Group A offenses | 4 | 5 | 7 | 3 | 7 | 41 | 51 |
Offenses South 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 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.