Tyler County, West Virginia

How a case moves here

Tyler County follows West Virginia 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: 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-1 W. 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
Courts: Circuit courts try all felonies and some misdemeanors and hear appeals from the lower courts. Magistrate courts in every county hear most misdemeanors and hold preliminary hearings in felony cases. Municipal courts hear city ordinance violations.
Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, Circuit Courts Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, Magistrate Courts
Judges and magistrates: Voters elect circuit judges in nonpartisan elections for eight-year terms, and circuit judges must have practiced law for five years. Voters elect magistrates in nonpartisan elections for four-year terms. The state constitution bars requiring magistrates to be lawyers, and the law asks only for a high school education.
Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, Circuit Courts Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, Magistrate Courts W. Va. Code 50-1-4

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.

What this county does differently

Pretrial practice: Mapping Pretrial Injustice listed its risk tool in 2021 as the Ohio Risk Assessment System Pretrial Assessment Tool (ORAS-PAT).
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

Every city, village, town, and township with any of its land in Tyler 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 Tyler County, 2021 to 2025
Offense	2021	2022	2023	2024	2025	Per 100k	West Virginia
Violent crime	9	20	36	14	18	243	275
Murder	1	2	1			Too few for a rate: the count is under 20.	5.9
Rape	5	7	16	8	13	132	56
Robbery						Too few for a rate: the count is under 20.	11
Aggravated assault	3	11	19	6	5	100	201
Property crime	36	42	21	21	14	451	1,209
Burglary	9	11	6	4	4	112	193
Larceny	21	30	14	15	8	295	924
Motor vehicle theft	6	1	1	2	2	Too few for a rate: the count is under 20.	92
Arson		1			1	Too few for a rate: the count is under 20.	12

Outside the crime index

Offenses outside the crime index reported by agencies in Tyler County, 2021 to 2025
Offense	2021	2022	2023	2024	2025	Per 100k	West Virginia
All offenses outside the crime index	135	118	87	116	128	1,983	2,050
Simple assault and intimidation	34	42	38	40	44	638	665
Vandalism	13	9	15	8	5	140	322
Fraud	9	8	13	10	13	160	160
Drug abuse violations	64	39	5	39	49	762	644
Weapons: carrying, possessing, etc.	4	9	1	3	4	80	84
Stolen property: buying, receiving, possessing	2	3				Too few for a rate: the count is under 20.	39
Forgery and counterfeiting	4	1	2	1	2	Too few for a rate: the count is under 20.	40
Embezzlement		1	1		1	Too few for a rate: the count is under 20.	8.5
Sex offenses (except rape and prostitution)	3	4	3	5	4	Too few for a rate: the count is under 20.	34
Prostitution and commercialized vice	1					Too few for a rate: the count is under 20.	3
Other Group A offenses	1	2	9	10	6	Too few for a rate: the count is under 20.	51
Manslaughter by negligence (not in the total)		1				Too few for a rate: the count is under 20.	1
Human trafficking (not in the total)	2					Too few for a rate: the count is under 20.	1.9

Offenses agencies in Tyler 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, 2022, 2024, 2025 added together, full years only, beside West Virginia'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. 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.