It’s a common thread in conversations around town, in homes and offices: Minot’s crime problems are caused by newcomers to the region, particularly those who arrived after the Bakken boomed.

The perception is at best, a gross over-simplification and, at worst, utter hogwash.

It is sadly in human nature to blame “the other” for one’s troubles. Down through history, those viewed as outsiders or somehow different from the prevailing culture make for easy targets for discrimination; easy subjects of scorn; easy scapegoats. It’s easy to dehumanize people who don’t look like us, act like us or whose names we don’t recognize. It’s easy to generalize about people unfamiliar to us.

These days, when such behavior should be diminishing in light of a connected, multicultural nation, this base tendency is instead stoked at the very highest level of politics. One presidential candidate tells you your problems are because of poor immigrants; another presidential candidate tells you your problems are your well-off neighbors.

In Minot, the photo of a convicted criminal appears on the front page of this newspaper and some will read and nod their head, noting that the person isn’t from town. For some residents, that’s all the evidence that’s needed to prove fault. Violent crime, burglaries, rampant drug use, domestic abuse…all the fault of these new people who came to pristine Minot and changed everything, some have said.

This is entirely untrue. Skimming the basic details on a weekly basis of criminal court cases reveals that there are plenty of people born and raised in Minot or in this region of North Dakota, committing every type of crime. Furthermore, Minot’s crime rate isn’t particularly higher than most comparably sized communities and it is far, far lower than many.

Criminals come in all shapes, sizes, ethnicities, faiths and background.

There are countless influences on crime poverty, manufactured drugs, the breakdown of the traditional family, a permissive society and cultural influences on children that extol violence, sexism and greed.

Being a new resident of a town isn’t one of these factors.

There will always be some snake oil salesmen peddling the fantasy that everything was just fine before those “other” people arrived. There always have been. Hopefully, the people of Minot will reject such bunk and embrace wisdom and virtue instead.