Ventura County Crime Statistics: 2026 Report

What California Department of Justice data (2016–2025) and the Oxnard Police Department’s own published crime report show for businesses in Ventura County — a sourced breakdown of violent crime, property crime, and city-level trends, with every county-wide figure pulled directly from CA DOJ’s OpenJustice query tool rather than a third-party indicators portal.

Ventura County is home to roughly 830,851 residents (U.S. Census Bureau, July 1, 2025 estimate) on California’s central coast, patrolled by a mix of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office (VCSO) — which covers unincorporated areas and several contract cities — and independently-staffed municipal departments, including the county’s largest department, Oxnard Police Department (OPD). County-wide figures below come directly from the California Department of Justice’s OpenJustice “Crimes & Clearances” search tool, queried live by county for 2016 through 2025 — not through a city or county community-indicators dashboard. City-level detail comes from Oxnard PD’s own published 2025 Uniform Crime Reporting news release, the department’s own account of its NIBRS-classified offenses.

Violent Crime in Ventura County

County-wide, CA DOJ’s Crimes & Clearances tool shows total violent crime offenses of 1,645 in 2022, 2,411 in 2023, 2,481 in 2024, and 2,427 in 2025 — a 2.2% decline from 2024 to 2025 following two years of higher counts.

Source: California Department of Justice, OpenJustice “Crimes & Clearances,” queried directly for Ventura County, 2016–2025 range.

The jump from 1,645 violent crimes in 2022 to 2,411 in 2023 (+46.6%) is large enough that we treat it as a probable reporting-methodology artifact rather than a genuine one-year 46.6% increase in violent crime — see Methodology. Aggravated assault drove most of it, rising from 1,084 to 1,707 (+57.5%) county-wide. Robbery and homicide, by contrast, do not show a comparable jump in the same year, and Oxnard PD’s own violent-crime total (the county’s largest independently-staffed department) was essentially flat in 2023 versus the two years around it — see the city comparison below.

Statewide, CA DOJ’s “Crime in California 2025” report (published July 2026, the current edition) shows California’s violent crime rate fell 10.2% in 2025 versus 2024, providing context for the county’s smaller 2.2% decline over the same period.

Property Crime & Commercial Burglary

County-wide property crime has fallen steadily and substantially: 11,124 offenses in 2022, easing slightly to 11,071 in 2023 and 11,216 in 2024, then dropping to 9,745 in 2025 — a 13.1% one-year decline.

Source: California Department of Justice, OpenJustice “Crimes & Clearances,” queried directly for Ventura County, 2016–2025 range. The property crime total follows CA DOJ convention and excludes arson, which is reported separately.

Burglary — the category most relevant to commercial and construction-site security — has fallen every year shown here, down 28.2% from 2022 to 2025 (1,619 to 1,163). Motor vehicle theft dropped 24.4% in the most recent year alone (1,370 to 1,036), consistent with the statewide 25.8% motor-vehicle-theft decline CA DOJ reported for 2025.

Source: California Department of Justice, “Crime in California 2025” (published July 2026), for statewide comparison.

City-by-City Comparison Within the County

Oxnard Police Department, serving the county’s largest city at 199,651 residents (U.S. Census Bureau, July 1, 2025 estimate), publishes its own year-over-year NIBRS crime data directly:

Source: Oxnard Police Department, “Oxnard’s 2025 Crime Stats News Release” (oxnard.gov, published February 25, 2026, updated July 14, 2026). Oxnard’s property crime total includes arson, per the department’s own reporting — unlike the CA DOJ county figures above, which exclude it.

Sources: California Department of Justice, OpenJustice; Oxnard Police Department 2025 Crime Stats News Release; U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts.

Oxnard’s own violent and property crime totals both fell faster than the countywide aggregate in 2025, and OPD reported a 100% clearance rate on its four 2025 homicides. We attempted to source live, citable data directly from Ventura County Sheriff’s Office and Simi Valley Police Department (the county’s second-largest independently-staffed department) for this compilation; a Sheriff’s press-release URL and a Simi Valley PD crime-statistics page each returned dead or redirected links at compile time, so neither is included as a cited primary source here (see Methodology). This comparison therefore covers the county’s single largest city, not its full roster of departments.

What the Data Means for Local Businesses

• The 2022-to-2023 county-wide violent crime jump is very likely a reporting artifact, not a real spike. A 46.6% one-year increase, concentrated almost entirely in aggravated assault, is far larger than anything Oxnard PD’s own data shows for the same year. Businesses should anchor on the more recent 2024–2025 trend (down 2.2% county-wide, down 6.2% in Oxnard) rather than the 2023 figure in isolation.
• Burglary is falling across the board. County-wide burglary is down 28.2% since 2022, and Oxnard’s burglary/breaking-and-entering count fell 19.3% in the most recent year alone — a directly relevant signal for commercial and construction-site security planning.
• City-level coverage in this page is limited to Oxnard. We could not source live, citable primary data from the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office or Simi Valley PD at compile time. Businesses in Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks, Ventura, Camarillo, or unincorporated areas of the county should request current numbers directly from their local agency rather than assume Oxnard’s trend applies evenly.

Methodology — How These Figures Were Compiled

All figures on this page were pulled directly from the originating source during research for this article (2026). We used:

• California Department of Justice’s OpenJustice “Crimes & Clearances” search tool, queried live by selecting Ventura County directly in the tool’s own jurisdiction filter (openjustice.doj.ca.gov), for the 2016–2025 range — not a city or county community-indicators portal, and not an aggregator.
• California DOJ’s “Crime in California 2025” report (published July 2026) for statewide rate context. This is the current edition; we did not use the superseded 2024 edition. This statewide PDF report does not itself break data down by county or city — it was used only for statewide figures.
• Oxnard Police Department’s “Oxnard’s 2025 Crime Stats News Release”, the department’s own published NIBRS Group A offense data comparing 2025, 2024, and 2023.
• U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts (July 1, 2025 estimate) for county and city population figures.

Agency verification. Every agency cited on this page was confirmed as a California agency under the FBI’s ORI convention for Ventura County (the CA056 prefix) before its data was used — a safeguard against pulling data from a same-named agency in another state.

Submission-gap check. CA DOJ’s “Crime in California 2025” report lists, by name, every agency that could not submit a full year of 2025 data in its “Agency Limitations for 2025” section: agencies in Butte, Fresno, Kern, Los Angeles, and San Diego counties. No Ventura County agency — including Ventura County Sheriff’s Office or Oxnard PD — appears on that list.

The 2022-to-2023 violent crime jump. We checked this 46.6% one-year increase against the threshold we treat as a likely reporting-methodology artifact rather than a genuine spike. Oxnard PD’s own report confirms it transitioned to NIBRS reporting “as of 2023,” and NIBRS is known to capture more offenses per incident than the legacy Summary Reporting System it replaced (a pattern CA DOJ and other California agencies have documented elsewhere). Oxnard’s own 2023 violent-crime total does not show a comparable spike, so we could not confirm which specific agency’s NIBRS transition drove the county-wide aggregate jump using the tools available for this compilation. We’ve flagged the figure rather than dropping it.

What we could not verify. We attempted to query Ventura County Sheriff’s Office and individual Ventura County cities (Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks, Ventura, Camarillo) directly through CA DOJ’s OpenJustice agency-level filter; that filter returned no displayable data for any agency we tried during this compilation, a tool limitation rather than a data absence. We also attempted the Ventura County Sheriff’s own published crime-statistics press release and the Simi Valley Police Department’s crime-statistics page; both URLs were dead or redirected to unrelated content at compile time. Rather than substitute a third-party aggregator estimate, we’ve published only what could be confirmed directly from CA DOJ’s county-wide tool, Oxnard PD, and the U.S. Census Bureau, and left the rest out.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is crime in Ventura County going up or down?
County-wide, CA DOJ data shows violent crime down 2.2% and property crime down 13.1% from 2024 to 2025. Oxnard PD, the county’s largest independently-staffed department, reported violent crime down 6.2% and property crime down 13.4% over the same period.

Is there an official Ventura County-wide crime statistic?
Yes — CA DOJ publishes county-wide crime counts directly through its OpenJustice “Crimes & Clearances” tool, which we queried live for this page rather than relying on a third-party indicators site.

Which is Ventura County’s largest city?
Oxnard, with 199,651 residents (U.S. Census Bureau, July 1, 2025 estimate). This page draws its city-level data from Oxnard PD’s own published report, since live data from other Ventura County departments was not accessible at compile time.

Why did violent crime appear to jump in Ventura County in 2023?
The county-wide total shows a 46.6% one-year increase in 2023 that we believe is largely a reporting-methodology artifact tied to agencies transitioning to the FBI’s incident-based (NIBRS) reporting standard, which counts more offenses per incident than the older summary system. See Methodology for what we could and couldn’t confirm about this.

Sources

• California Department of Justice — OpenJustice “Crimes & Clearances,” queried directly (openjustice.doj.ca.gov)
• California Department of Justice — “Crime in California 2025” (published July 2026), data-openjustice.doj.ca.gov
• Oxnard Police Department — “Oxnard’s 2025 Crime Stats News Release” (oxnard.gov)
• U.S. Census Bureau — QuickFacts, Ventura County and city of Oxnard, California (July 1, 2025 estimate)

More California County Crime Reports

This page is part of a series of sourced county-level crime reports covering Southern California. Each one is compiled the same way, directly from California Department of Justice data.

• Los Angeles County Crime Statistics: 2026 Report
• Orange County Crime Statistics: 2026 Report
• San Diego County Crime Statistics: 2026 Report
• San Bernardino County Crime Statistics: 2026 Report
• Riverside County Crime Statistics: 2026 Report
• Santa Barbara County Crime Statistics: 2026 Report
• Kern County Crime Statistics: 2026 Report

All reports in this series are collected under California crime statistics.