South Dakota
From the 50 State Visitor Guide:
S.D.C.L. 2021 §§ 22-24B-1 through 22-24B-36
AWA Compliant
Registration Triggers and Deadlines:
3 business days for
initial registration and updates, §22-24B-2; however, state law includes Saturday as a
business day. §37-24-1(2).
Per the S. Dak. SOR
office, there is “wiggle room” in the 3 business day registration requirement
for short term visitors, especially if you are passing thru on a road trip and
not staying in one location for more than a few days. If your stay in any one
place will exceed the 3 day requirement, visitors should “check in” at local
police or sheriff dept. and provide info about intended length of stay. Supposedly, if not more than 5-6 days you
will not be required to register. “Check out” upon departure.
Residency/Presence and Other Restrictions:
Residency
restriction: “No person who
is required to register … may establish a residence within” 500 ft. from
school, park, public playground, or public pool.
§22-24B-23. “Residence” defined
as the address a person lists for purposes of the
sex offender registry.
Presence restriction: “No person
who is required to register” may
“loiter” within 500 ft. form school, park, public playground, public pool, or
library unless registrant committed offense as a minor and was not convicted as
an adult. §22-24B-24. Petitions for
exemption possible.
Supposedly, short
term visitors who check in & check out according to the procedure described
above (Registration Triggers & Deadlines) would not be “required to
register” & thus not subject to these restrictions during their visit.
Duration & updates:
10 years to life;
Petition to remove – 5 years.
Updates every 6 mo. §22-24B-7.
Playing it loosy-goosy in South Dakota
The litany of South Dakota’s residence and presence restrictions described above is long, but upon closer inspection you’ll notice that they only apply to a “person who is required to register.” If you’re a short term visitor and avoid triggering an obligation to register, you’re off the hook.
South Dakota is one of a handful of states that, by policy, have decided to play loosy-goosy with a statutory very short (in South Dakota’s case three business days) visitor registration requirement by saying that visiting registrants have a “duty to check in” but then seemingly turn a blind eye to it when they don’t.
You may be wondering why the South Dakota state SOR office would want to pursue such a policy. Answer: Although South Dakota has very short visitor registration requirement, it also has a standardized procedure available to remove you from its registry after departure.
What this means for a local sheriff’s department bureaucrat is that any time a visitor is forced to register, they have to do all the work of adding that person to their registry and posting it on their website. Then as soon as that person leaves the state they have to do all the work of removing that person from their registry and their website. That’s double the work for somebody they really couldn’t care less about. Thus is born the separate, low effort, loosy-goosy “duty to check in” policy.
Why do I describe this policy as loosy-goosy? While I was updating all my state by state research in August 2022, the nice lady at the South Dakota SOR office came right out and said, “We have hundreds of sex offenders coming to the Sturgis Bike Rally every year. They typically stay more than three days but less than a week. Why would we want to register all these people and then have to remove them a few days later?”
[As an aside, I was amused by how the SOR lady’s description of the Sturgis Bike Rally made it sound like an annual sex offenders’ reunion. Hey, maybe NARSOL should hold next year’s national conference in Sturgis during the rally and make it official?]
She then said what I have posted on my South Dakota chart: There is “wiggle room” in the three business day registration requirement for short term visitors, especially if you are passing thru on a road trip and not staying in one location for more than a few days. If your stay in any one place will exceed the three business day requirement, visitors should “check in” at local police or sheriff dept. and provide info about intended length of stay. And remember, it’s business days, although SD counts Saturday as a business day.
The SOR lady stressed that all they are asking is that visiting registrants staying more than three days come in from the August heat and check in at the local sheriff’s department, then check out when you leave. No harm, no foul.
Since then the more I think about what the nice SOR lady said, the more I keep saying - - Wait a minute! I don’t know anything about bikers or biker culture, but it’s just really hard for me to imagine that hundreds of out of state registrant bikers are even going to have the slightest idea they are supposed to do that! Not to mention how many of them may have properly reported their out of state travel before leaving their home states.
What I am much more sure of is that all that is the last thing on anybody’s minds when they head off for the Sturgis Bike Rally.
And there is the dilemma for the South Dakota Sheriffs Association. Should we or should we not send a bunch of cops into the Sturgis Bike Rally to round up sex offenders? How would that look? Not good. Thus is born the loosy-goosy “check-in” policy that gets completely ignored in practice.
But suppose you aren’t a biker at the Sturgis Bike Rally? As I said above, the SOR office claim is that if you’re passing through on a road trip and not staying in any one place for more than three days they don’t care. So be guided by that.
Most recent visit – August 2025
In late August 2025 I was in fact passing through South Dakota on a road trip and not staying in any one place for more than three days. At first I planned to be in SD four days (including partial days) just to demonstrate how the system works, but commitments at home made me cut the whole trip back and that included cutting a day off of South Dakota. Even so, I was in the Black Hills on Memorial Day weekend, so that Sunday and Monday would not have counted.
I entered South Dakota on I-90 from Minnesota on Friday morning. My goal for Day 1 was a reserved motel room in Kadoka, but I stopped to see the Akta Lakota Museum & Cultural Center and Dignity statue in Chamberlain (see Lakota Nations blog entry) on the way.
Black Hills
Days 2 and 3 were devoted to sightseeing in the Black Hills, but because it was Labor Day weekend, Sunday did not count towards SD’s visitor limit – and Labor Day wouldn’t have either if I had stuck to my original plan. Business Day #3 would have been Tuesday, and I would only have had to decide how loosy-goosy to play on Wednesday, the 6th actual day in South Dakota.
Avoid Wall Drug like the plague – South Dakota’s version of Pedro’s South of the Border.
Places to go in the Black Hills:
Badlands National Park – Just remember, it’s going to take up most of a day (photo above).
Mammoth Site – Best display of
mammoths, sloths and saber tooth tigers anywhere.
Custer State Park – Has the
biggest Buffalo herd in the region and spectacular scenery.
Wind Cave – Great cave
tour. Has 90% of the world’s
boxwork. Also a Lakota sacred site – See
Lakota Nations blog entry.
Jewel Cave – I took the cheesy tour that involves almost all walking, but you can take the 90 minute tour that involves 745 steps (!), half up and half down.
Scenic drives in Custer SP and
Black Hills National Forest (see photo at top)
Reptile Gardens – Of the
roadside attractions, it’s the best.
1880 Train Ride in Hill City – There’s also
a train museum next door.
The Town of Deadwood – It’s great and has all the tacky tourist crap you can ask for. But all those historic buildings are early 20th Century, not cowboy era.
Crazy Horse is a Must See – See Lakota Nations blog entry.
Places to avoid in the Black Hills:
DO NOT go to Mount Rushmore –
Anyone who has any respect for the native people of this region should refuse
to visit Mount Rushmore or the nearby Borglum Rushmore Museum. See Lakota Nations blog entry.
Avoid anything Custer-related –
As the most evil villain in the history of the West, you should shun anything
Custer-related. See Lakota Nations blog entry.
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