Budget Matters: A Look at Police Spending In Virginia Localities (Updated Analysis)

Virginia’s criminal legal system should advance justice and treat people fairly, yet racial injustice and unequal outcomes permeate our system. A long history of discriminatory laws and practices — ranging from Reconstruction-era laws that used incarceration to impose unpaid labor on Black Virginians, to Jim Crow laws, to the more recent “broken windows” policing strategies and “three strikes” laws — means that race has always been a major factor at every stage of the criminal justice system. 

Today, police stop, search, and arrest Black Americans more frequently, and Black Americans also face higher rates of pre-trial detention. These stark differences in outcomes are not warranted by crime statistics; rather, they reflect bias and policies that perpetuate harm against people of color. For example: In 2023, Black Virginians accounted for nearly 30% of all traffic stops despite only making up 19% of the driving population. In 2023 vehicle searches also occurred more for Black and Latino drivers (2.5%) than white drivers (1.6%). In another example: even when the same crime has been committed, judges regularly give Black men longer sentences — 13% longer on average — than similarly situated white men. 

The interactive table below builds on TCI’s past research related to statewide spending on policing and summarizes per capita and total spending on law enforcement in Virginia’s localities. Since the prior report that used 2019 data, per capita spending by localities on “law enforcement and traffic enforcement” and general fund per capita spending on state police have each grown 7% after adjusting for inflation.