South Dakota profile    Tweet this

Sections
Charts & graphs
The cost of incarceration
Reports & briefings
Other resources
COVID-19

South Dakota has an incarceration rate of 824 per 100,000 people (including prisons, jails, immigration detention, and juvenile justice facilities), meaning that it locks up a higher percentage of its people than any democracy on earth. Read on to learn more about who is incarcerated in South Dakota and why.


6,500 people from South Dakota are behind bars

Pie chart showing that 7,300 South Dakota residents are locked up in federal prisons, state prisons, local jails and other types of facilities

Additionally, the number of people impacted by county and city jails in South Dakota is much larger than the graph above would suggest, because people cycle through local jails relatively quickly. Each year, at least 25,000 different people are booked into local jails in South Dakota.


Rates of imprisonment have grown dramatically in the last 40 years

graph showing the number of people in state prison and local jails per 100,000 residents in South Dakota from 1978 to 2015 Also see these South Dakota graphs:


Graph showing the number of people in South Dakota jails who were convicted and the number who were unconvicted, for the years 1978, 1983, 1988, 1993, 1999, 2005, and 2013.


Today, South Dakota’s incarceration rates stand out internationally

graphic comparing the incarceration rates of the founding NATO members with the incarceration rates of the United States and the state of South Dakota. The incarceration rate of 664 per 100,000 for the United States and 824 for South Dakota is much higher than any of the founding NATO members In the U.S., incarceration extends beyond prisons and local jails to include other systems of confinement. The U.S. and state incarceration rates in this graph include people held by these other parts of the justice system, so they may be slightly higher than the commonly reported incarceration rates that only include prisons and jails. Details on the data are available in States of Incarceration: The Global Context. We also have a version of this graph focusing on the incarceration of women.


People of color are overrepresented in prisons and jails

2010 graph showing incarceration rates per 100,000 people of various racial and ethnic groups in South Dakota

racial and ethnic disparities between the prison/jail and general population in SD as of 2010

See also our detailed graphs about Whites, Hispanics, Blacks, and American Indians/Native Americans in South Dakota prisons and jails.


South Dakota's criminal justice system is more than just its prisons and jails

Pie chart showing that 16,000 South Dakota residents are in various types of correctional facilities or under criminal justice supervision on probation or parole


The high cost of being incarcerated in South Dakota

Prisons and jails in South Dakota are increasingly shifting the cost of incarceration to people behind bars and their families, hiding the true economic costs of mass incarceration:


Our other articles about South Dakota


Other resources


Data on COVID-19 in South Dakota jails and prisons

We gave South Dakota a failing grade in September 2021 for its response to the coronavirus in prisons, noting that:

  • South Dakota is one of 13 states that did not implement any policies to accelerate releases, promote medical parole or compassionate release, prevent incarceration for technical violations of probation and parole, or hasten releases for people incarcerated on minor offenses.
  • South Dakota was one of 15 prison systems that did not have a policy making hand sanitizer widely available or providing free hygiene products — like soap — to incarcerated people.

For more detail, see our report States of Emergency.

Stay Informed

Get the latest updates:


And our other newsletters:







Stay Informed


Get the latest updates:



Tweet this page Donate