Following up on yesterday’s post about how Huron, Brookings, and other rural communities depend on immigration for their economic survival, an eager reader asked, “What are the crime rate statistics for Huron?”
Now we already know that the link between immigration and crime exists in the imaginations of some Americans and nowhere else. Immigration has brought no surge in crime to Aberdeen, contrary to the claims of hateful local racists.
Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg, who built his political career in part on fomenting racist fear of others, issued his office’s 2018 Crime in South Dakota report under the assurance that “South Dakota remains a safe place to live,” which by itself should refute any notion that increased immigration has made South Dakota more dangerous. But the city-by-city crime stats provided by local PDs in the report further support the notion that there is no connection between immigration and crime.
| Cities (pop > 10K) | Population | Arrests | Offenses | Arrests/Kpop | Offenses/Kpop |
| Rapid City | 75,290 | 7,773 | 12,482 | 103.2 | 165.8 |
| Watertown | 22,323 | 1,592 | 2,697 | 71.3 | 120.8 |
| Mitchell | 15,653 | 1,052 | 2,376 | 67.2 | 151.8 |
| Sioux Falls | 180,335 | 10,405 | 18,818 | 57.7 | 104.4 |
| Aberdeen | 28,713 | 1,540 | 2,816 | 53.6 | 98.1 |
| Vermillion | 10,804 | 534 | 992 | 49.4 | 91.8 |
| Pierre | 14,050 | 620 | 1,467 | 44.1 | 104.4 |
| Huron | 13,193 | 571 | 1,115 | 43.3 | 84.5 |
| Yankton | 14,523 | 539 | 1,357 | 37.1 | 93.4 |
| Spearfish | 11,763 | 304 | 1,227 | 25.8 | 104.3 |
| Brookings | 24,206 | 624 | 1,432 | 25.8 | 59.2 |
| Brandon | 10,107 | 184 | 295 | 18.2 | 29.2 |
| South Dakota | 882,235 | 45,142 | 75,955 | 51.2 | 86.1 |
In 2018, among the twelve South Dakota cities with population above 10,000, Huron had the fifth-lowest rate of arrests per 1,000 population and the third-lowest rate of offenses. Brookings had the second-lowest arrest- and offense-per-1,000 population. Huron and Brookings, identified in yesterday’s New York Times as having remarkably high rates of international immigration, both had arrest and offense rates lower that the statewide average rates, which would include all those supposedly sleepy small towns.
I do enjoy it when readers can inspire me to some original statistics-based journalism. Keep those cards and letters coming!
Despite the pearl clutching of the racists and race baiters (looking at you Donald) the actual data has long shown that immigrants commit crimes at much lower rates than native born Americans. This shouldn’t really surprise anyone, after traveling around the globe and jumping through hoops to get a shot at a better life living in the United States why would they risk everything by embarking on a life of crime? Thank you for putting a local focus on the issue with analysis of offical local data.
What is Brandon doing so right and Rapid City doing so wrong?
I think it would be helpful to also show the correlation between poverty and crime as well. This relates to why Brandon, an affluent bedroom community to Sioux Falls, has a low crime rate and why Rapid has a higher one.
Some might throw race into this discussion, but the poverty explains it a lot better. White meth dealers in small-town trailer parks, or Indian gang-bangers in North Rapid? Both are bad news.
TAG offers some good hypothesizing on why Brandon’s crime rate is lower than Rapid’s. Does anyone even hang out in downtown Brandon to make trouble? It seems all the action is in Sioux Falls.