County crime profile · 2024 · large county · property-led
Pennington County, SD
At 109,222 residents, Pennington County is a large county in South Dakota. FBI UCR county totals below are read before any per-100,000 rate (Census denominator when matched).
Pennington County, SD reported 130 violent crimes per 100,000 in FBI UCR 2024
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Pennington County, SD agencies reported 142 violent and 241 property offenses. That equals about 130 violent and 221 property crimes per 100,000 using a verified Census population join. Table 10 coverage is a voluntary subset of U.S. counties.
2024 UCR year
142 violent offenses
130/100K violent rate
What the 2024 FBI UCR record shows for Pennington County, SD
Position in the state cohort
Pennington County reported a higher violent-crime rate than most comparable South Dakota counties
At 130.0 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Pennington County ranks 4 of 41 — above 37 of the 40 other South Dakota counties whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test and carries a matched Census denominator. That is +203.3% against the cohort median of 42.9. Counties that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Offense mix
Violent offenses make up an unusually large share of the reported mix
Violent offenses are 37.1% of the 383 Part I offenses reported in Pennington County for 2024, against a median of 25.0% across comparable South Dakota counties — a gap of 12.1 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.
Share of the state cohort
Pennington County carries a large share of the reporting cohort’s total offenses
The 383 Part I offenses reported here are 24.5% of the 1,564 reported across all 41 comparable South Dakota counties in 2024. A county this large moves the statewide total on its own, so state-level changes should be read against its population of 109,222 rather than as a uniform shift.
2020–2024 direction
The reported violent-crime rate ended the window lower
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 162.1 per 100,000 in 2020 to 130.0 in 2024 (-19.8%). The highest observed value was 162.1 in 2020 and the lowest 104.4 in 2022. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft dominates the property total more than it does across the cohort
Larceny-theft is 68.9% of reported property offenses in Pennington County, against a cohort median of 60.0%. The remainder is burglary (50) and motor vehicle theft (25). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
On a large county row, county figures aggregate every participating agency inside the county. Participation is voluntary. Per-100,000 rates use a separately matched 2020 U.S. Census county population, never a Table 10 field; unmatched counties stay count-only. A large county line encloses very different communities.
Crime Breakdown (2024) · property-led · large county
Category
Count
Property Crime
241
Burglary
50
Larceny-Theft
166
Motor Vehicle Theft
25
Arson
1
Violent Crime
142
Murder
1
Rape
58
Robbery
7
Aggravated Assault
76
Reporting Agency
Pennington County Sheriff's Office NIBRS-participating
Pennington County's crime figures on this page originate from Pennington County Sheriff's Office's submission to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program.
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.
Similar-Size Counties in South Dakota
A per-capita rate is easiest to read against places of similar scale, so these are the South Dakota counties closest to Pennington County in population. Their populations run from 28,325 to 65,161, against 109,222 here. Or launch the
side-by-side compare tool
to benchmark two jurisdictions directly.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, Crime in the United States (CIUS) Table 10.
FBI Table 10 supplies county offense counts but no resident population. Where this page shows a per-100,000 rate, the denominator is a separately matched 2020 U.S. Census Bureau county population; unmatched county rows remain count-only. Statewide comparisons draw on the state UCR program. Verify with FBI.gov UCR and Census.gov QuickFacts.