Kentucky

What Kentucky's records show, how much of the state the FBI's data covers, and where the state publishes its own.

How Kentucky handles a case

Sets bail first: Pretrial services officer on the non-financial schedule, or a judge or trial commissioner
Who that is: Judges and others
Release on a schedule: Jail or police can release on a schedule
Time to see a judge: No hour limit set
Money bail: Allowed
Risk assessment: Public Safety Assessment (statewide)
Prosecutor: Commonwealth's attorney, one per judicial district, elected
Public defense: Statewide public defender
Jails run by: Mixed

Who decides release first: For eligible low-level charges, a pretrial services officer, a state court employee, releases the person on recognizance under the Supreme Court's non-financial bail schedule, with no judge. Everyone else is released only by a district judge, circuit judge, or trial commissioner, who gets the pretrial risk assessment within 24 hours of booking.
Supreme Court of Kentucky Order 2025-22
Time to see a judge: A person arrested without a warrant must be taken before a judge "without unnecessary delay." The rule sets no number of hours; when no judge is available, the jailer must bring a person who can't make bail to a judge without unnecessary delay.
Ky. R. Crim. P. 3.02
Money bail: Judges may set cash bail, but Kentucky has barred for-profit bail bonding since 1976, so there are no commercial bail bond agents. The schedule that lets pretrial officers release people is non-financial.
KRS 431.510 Supreme Court of Kentucky Order 2025-22

Crime and arrests

No figures yet

Reported offenses and arrests per 100,000 people, year by year, and how Kentucky compares with the country. They will come from the FBI's state totals.

FBI data coverage

Population covered: 99%; of Kentucky's people lived under an agency that reported to the FBI in 2025.
Agencies on NIBRS: 98%; 458 of 465 agencies send incident detail. The rest send summary counts or nothing.

7 agencies not reporting through NIBRS

Bullitt County Public SchoolsOther
Burgin Independent School DistrictOther
Harrison County SchoolsOther
Johnson County SchoolsOther
Madison County Public SchoolsOther
Magoffin County SchoolsOther
Perry County SchoolsOther

Counties and agencies: no data yet

Every agency in Kentucky by county, with the year each began sending incident detail to the FBI. They will come from the FBI's agency list and its NIBRS master files.

Source: FBI Crime Data Explorer, pulled 2026-09-26.

State crime reporting

Program: Kentucky State Police, Records Branch / Uniform Crime Reporting section
Incident reporting: KSP state NIBRS repository; agencies submit via KYOPS (state reporting tool) or their own RMS
Annual report: Crime in KentuckyLatest edition: 2025. Editions online 2005 to 2025.
Online portal: No state portal found.

Links and years checked 2026-09-26.

Kentucky sources

3 sources

Crime in Kentucky (KSP Crime and Traffic Data)State · KY
Kentucky State Police · Incidents, Arrests · pdf · annual
Kentucky State Police runs the state NIBRS program; annual Crime in Kentucky PDF reports.
Kentucky AOC Pretrial Release Outcomes reportsState · KY
Kentucky Administrative Office of the Courts · Bail, Courts · pdf · irregular
Custom PDF reports on pretrial release decisions and outcomes, statewide plus Fayette and Jefferson; custom reports on request.
Kentucky courts analytics dashboardsState · KY
Kentucky Administrative Office of the Courts · Courts · dashboard, pdf · monthly
Tableau Server (analytics.kycourts.net): filed and closed by category by county, 1995 on. View .csv returns 404.

Plus 83 national sources, from the FBI, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Census Bureau, the courts, and others.