What Are the Most Common Felony Charges?

The most common felony charges in the United States fall into a short list: drug offenses, property crimes, and aggravated assault lead state court dockets, while federal courts are dominated by immigration, drug trafficking, firearms, and fraud cases. Drug violations alone generated more than one million arrests in 2019, more than any other single offense category tracked by the FBI.¹ At the federal level, immigration offenses have overtaken drugs as the most frequently charged felony.²

Drug Offenses

Drug charges sit at the top of state felony filings year after year. The FBI recorded 1,052,101 drug abuse violation arrests nationally in 2019, more than any other offense category.¹ The conduct covered is broad: manufacturing, distributing, and possessing controlled substances in quantities large enough to trigger felony thresholds.

What pushes a drug case from misdemeanor into felony territory is almost always the type of substance and the amount. The DEA sorts controlled substances into five schedules based on abuse potential and accepted medical use, and penalties climb with both the schedule and the weight involved.³ Federal law ties mandatory minimum sentences directly to drug weight, so trafficking 400 grams or more of a fentanyl mixture triggers a 10-year minimum that can reach life imprisonment.⁴

Not every drug arrest becomes a felony. Possession of small amounts of marijuana is a misdemeanor or decriminalized in many places. But the sheer arrest volume keeps drug offenses at or near the top of felony filings each year.

Property Crimes

Property offenses are the next most frequent felony category. These are non-violent crimes involving stolen, damaged, or destroyed property: theft, burglary, motor vehicle theft, and arson. The FBI counted 775,091 property crime arrests in 2019.¹

The dollar amount separating misdemeanor theft from felony theft varies dramatically by state. New Jersey draws the line at just $200. Texas and Wisconsin don’t reach felony territory until $2,500. Most states land somewhere around $1,000. The same act of shoplifting can be a misdemeanor in one state and a felony carrying years of prison time in another, which is a big part of why property crime felony rates look so uneven across the country. A jurisdiction with a low threshold generates more felony charges from identical underlying behavior.

Aggravated Assault

Among violent crimes specifically, aggravated assault is the clear leader. The FBI logged 274,376 aggravated assault arrests in 2019, far ahead of robbery (56,305), rape (16,599), and murder (7,964).¹ Aggravated assault accounts for roughly four out of every five violent crime arrests.

What makes an assault “aggravated” rather than simple is typically a weapon or the severity of injuries inflicted. The FBI defines it as an attack intended to inflict severe bodily injury, usually accompanied by a firearm, knife, or other means capable of producing death or serious harm.⁵ A shove or a punch that doesn’t cause serious injury is usually a misdemeanor simple assault. Once a weapon is present or the victim suffers significant injuries, the charge jumps to a felony.

What the Federal Docket Looks Like

The mix of felony charges in federal court barely resembles the state picture. Four offense types have dominated federal courts for over 25 years: drugs, immigration, firearms, and fraud. Together they accounted for 81 percent of all federal cases in fiscal year 2024.²

Immigration offenses were the most common federal felony for the second year running, at 30 percent of cases (18,492 in fiscal year 2024). Most involve illegal reentry after prior removal.
Drug trafficking was a close second with 18,281 cases and an average sentence of 82 months, varying significantly by drug type.⁶
Firearms offenses made up 13 percent (8,131 cases), most commonly charging people legally prohibited from possessing firearms, such as convicted felons.
Fraud, theft, or embezzlement accounted for 9 percent (5,312 cases), covering schemes against government programs like Medicare, tax fraud, and identity theft. It was the only category that increased from the prior year.

The split makes sense once you consider what belongs in federal court. Federal prosecutors handle crimes that cross state lines, violate a specifically federal statute, or occur on federal property. A street-level drug arrest is usually a state case; a multi-state trafficking operation is federal. A bar fight resulting in aggravated assault goes to state court; illegal reentry after deportation is exclusively federal.

Why These Charges Lead the Statistics

The rankings reflect enforcement priorities at least as much as actual criminal behavior. Decades of policy focused on drug interdiction produced enormous arrest volumes. When priorities shift, the numbers follow. The U.S. Sentencing Commission reported that both drug and immigration cases actually declined in fiscal year 2024 compared to the prior year.²

Statutory thresholds play an underappreciated role. A state that sets its felony theft line at $200 will prosecute far more felony thefts than one with a $2,500 threshold, even if residents steal at identical rates. Drug quantity thresholds work the same way. States that treat any detectable amount of certain substances as a felony generate more felony filings than states that require larger weights.

Plea bargaining is the other force shaping these numbers. Roughly 98 percent of federal criminal cases end in a plea rather than a trial. Defendants charged with higher-level felonies frequently plead to lesser ones, so final conviction statistics don’t perfectly mirror the original charges. A drug trafficking charge may resolve as simple possession. An aggravated assault may become a misdemeanor battery. The felony counts in official records are often the product of negotiation, not the original allegation.

What Counts as a Felony in the First Place

A felony is any crime carrying a potential sentence of more than one year in prison.⁷ That one-year line is what separates every charge discussed above from its misdemeanor counterpart. Federal law sorts felonies into five classes (A through E) based on maximum sentence length, and most states use a similar tiered system with either letter classes or numbered degrees.⁸ A higher class means longer potential prison time, larger fines, and more severe collateral consequences after release.

1
Federal Bureau of Investigation. Crime in the U.S. 2019 – Table 43
2
United States Sentencing Commission. Annual Report 2024
3
Drug Enforcement Administration. Drug Scheduling
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 21 USC 841 – Prohibited Acts A
5
Federal Bureau of Investigation. Crime in the U.S. 2017 – Aggravated Assault
6
United States Sentencing Commission. Drug Trafficking
7
National Conference of State Legislatures. Misdemeanor Sentencing Trends
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 3559 – Sentencing Classification of Offenses