Idaho’s crime rate falls 3.5%

BOISE – A robust economy appears to be luring largely law-abiding new residents to Idaho, the third-fastest-growing state, as the crime rate declined again in 2006, in categories such as murder, burglary and hate crimes.

The 2006 crime rate slipped another 3.5 percent for the most serious offenses, compared to 2005, according to the Idaho State Police’s annual crime profile released Friday. There were 6,162 crimes per 100,000 residents, the report shows.

From 1999, the first year for which statistics are immediately available from the Idaho State Police, the crime rate per 100,000 residents fell nearly 10 percent, according to an Associated Press analysis of data.

In the same period, the state’s population has grown about 17 percent, or more than 210,000 people, to some 1.46 million. Idaho’s population growth is outpaced only by Arizona and Nevada.

In 2006, Idaho’s gross state product increased 7.4 percent to $45.3 billion, double the national pace. Meanwhile, unemployment has been below 4 percent for 25 months in a row.

Law enforcement agencies say these factors are among those helping keep Idaho’s crime rate in check.

“Compared to other larger or even comparable (states), we stack up pretty good,” said Rick Ohnsman, an Idaho State Police spokesman.

Still, Idaho prisons are filling up faster than ever, in part due to another reported increase in sex crimes and drug convictions, the latter stemming largely from continued methamphetamine abuse problems. Sex crimes rose 13.5 percent, and drug violations rose more than 9 percent last year, jumping for the fourth year in the last five.

Law enforcement agents seized more than 42 pounds of meth, an illegal stimulant, in 2006.

Based on the current rate of inmate population growth, a consultant hired by the state said this month that Idaho will likely have to make room for 5,560 more inmates during the next decade, in new prisons costing more than $1 billion. The state currently has about 7,000 inmates in eight prisons.

The 2006 crime profile is based on information provided to the Idaho State Police by 108 law enforcement agencies.