How Bad Are the Crime Rates in Great Falls and Cascade County?

As we approach voting time again in Great Falls, the public safety mill levy will be one of the hot topics, but do you know what the crime rates are in Great Falls or in Cascade County?

Is the levy needed? How bad are the statistics that would warrant another tax on homes, businesses and property owners? Especially with the current state of the economy and the city just passing another levy/tax with the Great Falls Public Library.

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Digging Into the Generalized Statistics in Great Falls and Cascade County

The Montana Board of Crime Control issues statistics yearly on crime rates across the state. And while the stats are from the previous year, (2022) it still gives a glimpse of what we are facing here and across the state in combating various crimes.

Thankfully, Great Falls and Cascade Country have remained out of the top spot, however, we do make it into the top 5 of the state when it comes to crime.

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The Stats Are a Little Tricky, Maybe We Aren't as Good as We Think

According to the charts available at the MBCC, Cascade County ranks 3rd in the state in offense rates. Sounds not bad, right? Wrong. When you dig into the stats more, even though we are ranked lower than Yellowstone and Missoula counties, we had more offenses per capita. Not a great stat.

Cascade County had 9151 offenses in the calendar year of 2022. In comparison, Yellowstone had 15,984. Big difference. But those occurrences happen more often per citizen in Great Falls. The offense rate is nearly 1079 per 10,000 population, but in Yellowstone that rate falls to just over 941 per 10,000 population.

What About Drug Statistics? Are They Better or Worse?

In Great Falls, we saw huge jumps in drug seizures between the years 2018 and 2019, with the largest seizures in 2020 at 568. The following year saw a small decline to 420, but in 2022 it rose again to nearly 500. It seems that 2023 will see an increase as well with the reports from local law enforcement so far.

Make your voice heard at the town hall and neighborhood council meetings. Whether for or against, voting matters.