Crime in Kentucky (2024)

Kentucky agencies reported 72,112 offenses to the FBI in 2024: 9,779 violent crimes, 61,938 property crimes and 395 arsons, across 386 reporting agencies.

Per 100,000 residents

Against a 2024 population of 4,584,046 (Census estimates). A floor: Kentucky agencies that did not report contribute nothing.

213.3

Violent per 100k

1351.2

Property per 100k

6.1

Murder per 100k

226.4

Motor vehicle theft per 100k

Offenses by category

Offense	Offenses	Share
Murder & nonnegligent manslaughter	279	0.4%
Rape	1,488	2.1%
Robbery	1,612	2.2%
Aggravated assault	6,400	8.9%
Burglary	8,881	12.3%
Larceny-theft	42,680	59.2%
Motor vehicle theft	10,377	14.4%
Arson	395	0.5%

By county

Counties with sufficient reporting coverage (118 of Kentucky's counties).

Largest reporting agencies

Agency	Violent	Property	Total
Louisville Metro Police Department	4,788	22,513	27,449
Lexington Police Department	847	7,352	8,213
Bowling Green Police Department	174	2,270	2,451
Owensboro Police Department	210	1,753	1,974
Florence Police Department	77	1,067	1,146
Hopkinsville Police Department	137	769	908
St. Matthews Police Department	22	881	903
Richmond Police Department	82	751	834
Paducah Police Department	72	744	824
Covington Police Department	118	670	791
Jeffersontown Police Department	30	650	680
Boone County Sheriff's Office	67	531	600
Henderson Police Department	88	501	594
Ashland Police Department	42	526	573
Newport Police Department	45	526	572

How to read these numbers

Counts are offenses reported by law-enforcement agencies to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting program for 2024(Return A master file, which incorporates the FBI's own NIBRS-to-SRS conversion for agencies that report incident-based data). Nothing here is estimated: an agency that did not report contributes nothing, so totals are floors, not universes.

County figures use headquarters-county assignment: an agency's offenses count in the county where it is headquartered. Sheriff and state-police activity can span county lines; a county's figure is best read as "offenses reported by agencies based here." Counties where reporting agencies cover less than half of the policed population get no page; between 50% and 80% the page carries a visible partial-coverage notice.

Rates per 100,000 residentsuse Census Population Estimates (PEP) for the same year as the crime data. They appear only where the population served by agencies headquartered in a county is within 10% of the population that lives there. Where a police force covers several counties — the NYPD polices five boroughs from its Manhattan headquarters — the two geographies disagree, and a rate would be wrong by several times over in both directions. Those counties show counts without a rate rather than a number that looks authoritative and isn't.

Because non-reporting agencies contribute nothing, every rate here is a floor: the true rate is at least this high. Rates are most comparable between places with similar reporting coverage, which each page states.

Violent crime = murder + rape + robbery + aggravated assault. Property crime = burglary + larceny-theft + motor vehicle theft. Arson is tracked separately (from the FBI's de-duplicated SRS/NIBRS arson data) and is excluded from the property composite, following FBI practice. Aggravated assault excludes simple assault.

These figures will not match the FBI's published national estimates(which impute for non-reporting agencies) or the 12-month quarterly trend windows elsewhere on this site — different universes, both documented.