West Virginia
What West Virginia's records show, how much of the state the FBI's data covers, and where the state publishes its own.
How West Virginia handles a case
- Sets bail first
- Magistrate
- Who that is
- Not a judge
- Release on a schedule
- Unknown
- Time to see a judge
- No hour limit set
- Money bail
- Allowed
- Risk assessment
- Statewide
- Prosecutor
- Prosecuting attorney, one per county, elected
- Public defense
- Mixed
- Jails run by
- State
- 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
Crime and arrests
No figures yet
FBI data coverage
- Population covered
- 87%
- of West Virginia's people lived under an agency that reported to the FBI in 2025.
- Agencies on NIBRS
- 99%
- 406 of 410 agencies send incident detail. The rest send summary counts or nothing.
4 agencies not reporting through NIBRS
- Beckley/Raleigh County Drug and Violent Crime Task ForceOther
- Department of Natural Resources: HeadquartersOther State Agency
- Mountain Regional Drug and Violent Crime Task ForceOther
- Windsor Heights Police DepartmentCity
Counties and agencies: no data yet
Source: FBI Crime Data Explorer, pulled 2026-09-26.
State crime reporting
- Program
- West Virginia State Police, Uniform Crime Reporting section (WVIBRS)
- Incident reporting
- WVIBRS (West Virginia Incident-Based Reporting System)
- Annual report
- Crime in West VirginiaLatest edition: 2019. Editions online 1972 to 2019.
- Online portal
- No state portal found.
- What changed
- No edition after 2019 is posted; 2020 and 2021 URLs following the same pattern return 404.
Links and years checked 2026-09-26.
West Virginia sources
West Virginia State Police · Incidents, Arrests · pdf · annual
NIBRS-certified (WV-IBR) since 1998; annual Crime in West Virginia PDFs only.
- West Virginia courts annual statisticsState · WV
Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, Division of Statistical Information · Courts · pdf, dashboard · annual
County (55): circuit and magistrate criminal filings. 2014-2025. Dashboards preliminary.
Plus 83 national sources, from the FBI, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Census Bureau, the courts, and others.