Professor Says Juvenile Crime Wave Exaggerated UI Sociologist Believes Blaming Gangs Makes Matters Worse

A sociologist at the University of Idaho is urging restraint in the assessment of what many political leaders are characterizing as a juvenile crime wave in the state.

Associate professor Eric Jensen acknowledges there are more juveniles crimes today than five years ago, but he believes the increase is being disproportionately portrayed and that problem is being compounded by an unsubstantiated belief that youth gangs have become prevalent in Idaho.

“The data just doesn’t support the political rhetoric,” Jensen said.

Last January’s murder of a New Plymouth policeman by a 14-year-old boy and the killing of a Rogerson man by another teenager several days earlier elevated concern over juvenile crime and prompted a summer-long review of Idaho’s juvenile justice system and the never-fullyimplemented Juvenile Justice Reform Act of 1989.

That review has resulted in the recommendation that the state’s juvenile justice system, now buried in the Department of Health and Welfare, be elevated to a separate entity and substantially reorganized.

“We didn’t anticipate how far our young people would degenerate by 1994,” said Senate Judiciary Chairman Denton Darrington, who was a key player in development of the 1989 program and cochairman of this year’s Interim Committee on Juvenile Justice Reform.

But Jensen said the juvenile arrest figures used by policymakers to support proposed reforms may not give a realistic picture of juvenile crime in Idaho. He maintained that because of the state’s dramatic population growth, the total number of juvenile arrests will increase. Recent Census Bureau figures showed Idaho population was the nation’s second fastest growing since the Juvenile Justice Reform Act passed. Only Nevada exceeded Idaho’s percentage increase of 12.5 percent.

Jensen contended that assessing juvenile arrests against that growth would yield a more accurate picture of the extent of youth crime.

In fact, he argued, figures show that drug use among juveniles is actually lower now than several years ago.

And Jensen believes attributing the purported juvenile crime wave to intensified gang activity is distorting the picture as well.

“People are too quick to use the gang label,” he said, “especially in small towns or rural communities.”

Applying that label to juveniles creates an image that has been glorified in the movies, he said, and for the small percentage of chronic juvenile offenders offers another avenue of recognition.

“I think we’re sort of dangling a carrot in front of young people,” Jensen said.