RD175 - Crime in Virginia 2015


Executive Summary:
Crime is of great concern to all citizens of Virginia. By use of crime statistics, criminal justice agencies can make an informed decision concerning the most efficient and effective manner in which to dedicate their limited resources toward the reduction of crime in their communities. The Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program is a system of collecting and analyzing crime statistics gathered on selected crimes by participating law enforcement agencies throughout the Commonwealth. We acknowledge the efforts made by these agencies in making this report accurate and concise.

All information in this report uses an incident based reporting format. The Incident Based Reporting (IBR) central repository went into production in January 1994. At that time all contributing agencies were given five years to convert their summary system into an incident based system. All agencies have now completed this process and we are no longer accepting summary hard copy reports. In the section, "Group A Offenses By Contributing Agencies," if the agency did not submit an entire year of data, the footnote beside the agency's name represents the number of months of submission. The statewide population for this publication (8,382,993) is a 2015 provisional estimate provided by the Weldon Cooper Center For Public Service, University of Virginia.

In accordance with the Code of Virginia, the Department of State Police, as the central repository, collects crime information from participating agencies. The most accurate information available in Virginia is used to generate the statistics contained in this annual report. IBR statistics were originally for police agencies only, but community concern has generated a use by both public and private sources. This use increases yearly. The IBR information has become the primary vehicle used to evaluate levels of criminal activity in jurisdictions throughout Virginia.

The participation and cooperation of all agencies making this publication possible is sincerely appreciated. The quality of the program continues to be maintained through their cooperative efforts.

Colonel W. Steven Flaherty
Superintendent

2015 Facts At A Glance

• There were 441,355 Group A Offenses reported by the contributing agencies. (Page 8)

• The total number of incidents of crime was 389,019 and the month of July had the greatest number reported. (Page 7)

• Of the 17,459 violent crimes reported, 50% occurred in the residence/home. Page 46)

• There were 5,097 victims of the 4,787 forcible sex offenses reported by the contributing agencies; 84.4% of the victims were female. (Pages 14 & 15)

• The theft of money accounted for a property loss of $64,061,900. (Page 60)

• Firearms represented 24.7% of all known weapons used in aggravated assaults. Of all victims of aggravated assault, 64.3% had some type of injury. (Page 47)

• There was a total value loss of $75,278,993 related to 7,955 completed motor vehicle offenses. (Page 61)

• There were 126,032 Group A arrests reported by the contributing agencies and 156,390 Group B arrests reported. (Pages 74 & 75)

• There were 1,238 assaults on officers reported in Virginia. Just under one-quarter (24.2%) involved some type of injury to the officer. (Page 56)

• Of the 155 hate crime offenses reported, 45.8% of these were assault offenses and 31.6% were vandalism/damage of property offenses. (Page 52)

Clearance Rates:

This report no longer contains clearance rates. The IBR system does not accurately reflect the volume of clearances each department produces in a given year. Additionally, the number of arrests in a jurisdiction does not provide precise offense clearance information in that one person arrested could clear multiple offenses.