County crime profile · 2024 · mid-size county · property-led
Union County (16,811 people) sits in the mid-size county band in South Dakota. This page opens with reported offense counts, then rates where a Census join exists.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Union County, SD reported 60 violent crimes per 100,000 in FBI UCR 2024
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Union County, SD agencies reported 10 violent and 13 property offenses. That equals about 60 violent and 77 property crimes per 100,000 using a verified Census population join. Table 10 coverage is a voluntary subset of U.S. counties.
Small-count caution
Union County reported 10 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 16,811. At this volume one additional or one fewer report moves the per-100,000 rate noticeably, so the figure is better read as a data point than as a precise measurement, and year-to-year swings here are expected.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 43.5% of the 23 Part I offenses reported in Union County for 2024, against a median of 25.0% across comparable South Dakota counties — a gap of 18.5 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-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 76.9% of reported property offenses in Union County, against a cohort median of 60.0%. The remainder is burglary (3) and motor vehicle theft (0). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Position in the state cohort
At 59.5 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Union County ranks 17 of 41 — above 24 of the 40 other South Dakota counties whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test and carries a matched Census denominator. That is +38.8% 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 59.5 per 100,000 in 2020 to 59.5 in 2024 (+0.0%). The highest observed value was 59.5 in 2020 and the lowest 17.8 in 2022. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Mid-size county rows still aggregate voluntary UCR submissions. Per-100,000 rates need a matched 2020 Census population; unmatched stay count-only. County-wide totals rarely describe any single town inside the line.
| Category | Count |
|---|---|
| Property Crime | 13 |
| Burglary | 3 |
| Larceny-Theft | 10 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 0 |
| Arson | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 10 |
| Murder | 0 |
| Rape | 1 |
| Robbery | 0 |
| Aggravated Assault | 9 |
Union County's crime figures on this page originate from Union 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.
A per-capita rate is easiest to read against places of similar scale, so these are the South Dakota counties closest to Union County in population. Their populations run from 11,059 to 19,956, against 16,811 here. Or launch the side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two jurisdictions directly.
State atlas: South Dakota · Compare · Rankings
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.
Read our methodology , how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.
Every figure on PlainCrime is rendered directly from FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) source data, no number is typed in by an editor. This page draws directly on FBI Uniform Crime Reporting source data, no figure is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.