Box Elder, SD has a C safety grade (55/100) with a violent crime rate of 350 per 100,000, 1% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Box Elder (14,589 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then SD and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Box Elder, SD carries a PlainCrime C safety grade with violent crime 1% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Box Elder, SD shows violent crime at 349.6 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,192.7 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 1% below the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade C from those rates. Figures are voluntary agency submissions joined to population denominators; incomplete coverage can move the number.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Box Elder's 349.6 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Clark (344.2), Watertown (303.2), Huron (291.7), Mobridge (279.8). These are same-year agency submissions that pass the same completeness screen, not a claim that the cities have identical conditions. They make the cohort position above checkable against named records instead of a generic state average.
Position in the state cohort
At 349.6 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Box Elder ranks 8 of 39 — above 31 of the 38 other South Dakota cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +79.6% against the cohort median of 194.6. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 567.2 per 100,000 in 2020 to 349.6 in 2024 (-38.4%). The highest observed value was 579.3 in 2021 and the lowest 349.6 in 2024. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 22.7% of the 225 Part I offenses reported in Box Elder for 2024, against a median of 15.9% across comparable South Dakota cities — a gap of 6.7 points. Offense mix is shaped by which agencies report and how incidents are classified as well as by the underlying offenses, so it describes the reported record rather than a settled difference in conditions.
Property counts dominate Box Elder's FBI UCR Table 8 municipal row. Per-100,000 rates use the reporting-year population on that row; cities that fail the completeness test stay out of rate rankings. A citywide figure rarely describes any single neighbourhood inside the municipal boundary.
Mid-size municipal totals above are reported offenses, not safety advice for any single block. Reporting completeness still varies by year and agency.
Across 14.8 Census sq mi, Box Elder logged 11.7 property and 3.4 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Box Elder leans on larceny-theft at 56% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,685.
Violent offenses are 23% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Box Elder offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (14.8 sq mi); mix index is HHI x 10,000 on the offense-type shares above. Distinct from the per-100K rates in the hero.
| Offense | Count | Rate /100K |
|---|---|---|
| Property Crime | 174 | 1192.7 |
| Larceny-Theft | 126 | 863.7 |
| Burglary | 25 | 171.4 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 23 | 157.7 |
| Arson | 1 | 6.9 |
| Violent Crime | 51 | 349.6 |
| Aggravated Assault | 39 | 267.3 |
| Rape | 10 | 68.5 |
| Murder | 1 | 6.9 |
| Robbery | 1 | 6.9 |
Lead series · fell across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · fell · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 10,402 | 567.2 | 2807.2 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 10,876 | 579.3 | 2133.1 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 12,710 | 401.3 | 1455.5 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 12,916 | 441.3 | 1664.6 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 14,589 | 349.6 | 1192.7 |
Box Elder Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Box Elder's 225 reported offenses (5-year span 2020-2024).
This agency reports via NIBRS, the incident-based system that captures more detail per offense (multiple crimes per incident, victim/offender data) than the older summary counts.
Crime rates read differently at different scales, so these are the South Dakota cities closest to Box Elder in population. Their populations run from 8,055 to 15,698, against 14,589 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Box Elder sits at 349.6/100K violent (grade C); the South Dakota cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Box Elder at 349.6/100K violent and 1,192.7/100K property - matched below outside South Dakota (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
349.6/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
1,192.7/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
In 2024, Box Elder reported 51 violent crimes and 174 property crimes, for a total of 225 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Box Elder's violent crime rate decreased by 20.8%, and the property crime rate decreased by 28.3%.
The most common crime type in Box Elder is larceny-theft, accounting for 56.0% of all reported crimes (126 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Box Elder figures are FBI UCR CIUS Table 8 (vintage 2024), population-adjusted per 100,000.
Denominators are the reporting-year population on the municipal row. Incomplete years are dropped from rankings. Confirm at FBI Crime Data Explorer and Census.gov QuickFacts.
Disclaimer (mid-size municipal): figures are informational, not advice. FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program is the source. Consult a professional before decisions.
Mid-size rate methodology for how Box Elder's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Box Elder, SD rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Every figure on PlainCrime is rendered directly from FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) source data, no number is typed in by an editor. Box Elder is scored in the mid-size municipal band (14,589 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.