Oil Boom Brings Crime as Well as Jobs on Great Plains

"GLASGOW, Mont. — Drug crimes in eastern Montana have more than doubled. Assaults in Dickinson, N.D., have increased fivefold in just two years. And the once-sleepy town of Plentywood, Mont., has seen three assaults with weapons in the past few months — a prospect previously unheard of in the tiny community tucked against the Canada border.

Booming oil production has brought tens of thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenues to communities across a wide expanse of the Northern Plains. But it also has brought more crime, forcing law enforcement from the U.S. and Canada to deal with spiking offenses ranging from drug trafficking and gun crimes to prostitution.

The rural region is emerging as one of the top oil producing areas of North America. Officials say up to 30,000 more workers could descend on the Bakken oil fields of Montana, North Dakota and Saskatchewan in the next few years."

Matthew Brown reports for the Associated Press April 23, 2012.