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Arrests in South Dakota

Agencies in South Dakota reported 44,800 arrests to the FBI in 2025, broken down here by the arrestee’s race, sex and age.

American Factbook Research

Read these figures with these

  • An arrest is an event, not a person. One person arrested three times in a year is three arrests, so these are not counts of individuals and a rate is not the share of a population that was arrested.
  • Race is recorded by the arresting agency, not reported by the person arrested.
  • The FBI publishes no ethnicity field with these arrests, so no Hispanic or Latino figure can be derived from them. Hispanic arrestees are recorded under a race, which is why the population each rate divides by is that race across all origins rather than the non-Hispanic part of it.
  • The FBI’s “Multiple” category is an arresting officer’s classification of one person. The Census Bureau’s “two or more races” is what a person says about themselves. They are not the same population, so that row carries a count and no rate.
  • Reporting to the FBI is voluntary and coverage varies by agency and by year, so a change in an arrest count can be a change in which agencies reported.
  • A rate is not published where fewer than 20 arrests lie behind it. That is the convention US federal vital statistics use for an unreliable rate, and it matters most in the smallest groups: nineteen arrests among a few hundred residents produces a figure that one or two arrests would move by a third. The count is always shown.
  • Comparing the composition of arrestees with the composition of a population assumes equal offending and equal likelihood of arrest across groups. This data supports neither assumption, and nothing here implies either.
  • 344 arrests in 2025 carry no race at all — not even “unknown” — so the race rows total slightly less than the arrests recorded.

By race · 2025

Arrests per 100,000 residents of that group in South Dakota, using Census Bureau estimates for the same year. The FBI’s legacy grouping, “Asian, Native Hawaiian, or Other Pacific Islander”, contains two of the rows below and is left out rather than counted twice.

1 more column on a wider screen

Arrests in South Dakota by race, 2025
RaceArrestsShare of arrestsPer 100,000
American Indian or Alaska Native21,03547.0%25,049
White16,42436.7%2,135
Unknown4,1099.2%
Black or African American2,8506.4%11,660
Asian2170.5%1,247
Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander1650.4%14,973
Multiple00.0%
Not Specified00.0%

By sex · 2025

30,385
Male
6,442 per 100,000 residents
14,415
Female
3,110 per 100,000 residents

By age · 2025

Arrests in South Dakota by age band and sex, 2025
AgeSexArrestsPer 100,000
Under 10Female0
Under 10Male1
Under 11Female0
Under 11Male0
10-12Female98258
10-12Male215565
11-12Female0
11-12Male0
13-14Female3101,230
13-14Male4931,957
15Female2682,113
15Male4093,225
16Female2872,250
16Male5364,203
17Female3442,614
17Male5984,544
18Female4713,656
18Male8686,737
19Female5063,736
19Male9537,036
20Female4763,572
20Male9036,777
21Female4293,328
21Male7245,617
22Female3732,991
22Male7325,870
23Female4063,283
23Male7496,056
24Female3973,131
24Male7145,631
25-29Female1,9733,316
25-29Male3,6566,144
30-34Female2,1803,776
30-34Male4,2007,275
35-39Female1,9793,340
35-39Male3,9386,646
40-44Female1,6372,763
40-44Male3,5055,917
45-49Female9601,809
45-49Male2,3624,451
50-54Female5321,121
50-54Male1,7343,655
55-59Female380775
55-59Male1,3292,710
60-64Female222380
60-64Male9961,704
65 and overFemale187103
65 and overMale770425
Juvenile OtherFemale0
Juvenile OtherMale0
Adult OtherFemale0
Adult OtherMale0

Sources

Data retrieved

South Dakota elsewhere on the Factbook

  • Reported crimeCrime and justice

    Offenses reported to police by type, the trend, and the reporting coverage.

  • Prison populationCrime and justice

    People held under the state’s correctional authority, and the imprisonment rate. A different publisher counting a different thing.

  • Hate crimeCrime and justice

    Incidents reported to the FBI by bias motivation, as counts — the collection publishes no participation share, so there is no rate to compare states on.

  • Federal obligationsFederal spending

    What federal agencies obligated against a place of performance in the state, per resident and by agency.

  • The South Dakota Factbook entryAcross the Factbook

    Every measure the Factbook publishes for this state in one place, each with where it ranks among the others and the record it came from.

The immigration hub has no page for a state: CBP publishes by sector and field office, which are its own areas of responsibility rather than a geography, so assigning them to states would be a claim the data does not make. Immigration and the border.