Statistics show crimes occurring more frequently in Idaho

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05:43 PM MDT on Wednesday, July 6, 2005
Robbie Johnson
Idaho's NewsChannel 7


BOISE -- Idaho’s latest crime statistics were released to the public today and provide some new insight about how often crimes occur in our state.

The 2004 numbers reveal that a crime against persons, which includes assault or murder, happen once every 25 minutes.

Crimes against society, such as drug offenses, occur every 36 minutes. But the type of offense that has increased the most is property crime, which happens every eight minutes in Idaho.

There were more than 60,000 property crimes reported in Idaho during 2004. That’s a 12 percent increase in property loss from 2003.

Idaho State Police Captain Don Van Cleave says an increase in meth use explains the jump in thefts.

“We know that 85 percent or more of all crime is related to some type of substances abuse,” said Van Cleave.
Methamphetamine is now such a widely used drug in Idaho, its use ranks second only to alcohol. Van Cleave says users are desperate for cash.

“And they have to turn to crime to find a course of income to buy the drug," Van Cleave said.

Last year violent crimes also increased, and were up more than three percent, to nearly 3,500 cases. Most of them are aggravated assaults. As it turns out, police believe meth is partly responsible for that jump as well.

“It creates a violent tendency, a really strong stage of paranoia, and you are going to get more violent crime associated with it when people are under the influence of meth, and we are seeing that,” Van Cleave said.

Idaho State Police says that education is one way they are trying to tackle the meth use problem.

Another figure that stood out in 2004, hate crimes were up 85 percent to 37 cases.

And these new stats show the overall number of offenses in Idaho are on the rise, but not in proportion with the population. Which means the crime rate per capita in Idaho is actually down.

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Year 2004 Report - Crime in Idaho
http://www.isp.state.id.us/identific...daho_2004.html