Crime in Hawai'i up for third straight year

By Allison Schaefers
Advertiser Staff Writer

While a Justice Department survey shows that violent and property crimes in the United States dropped in 2002, Hawai'i's violent and property crimes rose for the third year in a row, according to the latest data from the attorney general's office.

The Justice Department announced Sunday that a national study based on a survey of victims showed violent and property crimes dipped last year to their lowest levels since records started being compiled 30 years ago.

The crimes dropped more than 50 percent in the past decade, according to the National Crime Victimization Study.

The study did not have a state to state breakdown, but Paul Perrone, research chief for the attorney general's office, said preliminary figures from the national Uniform Crime Reports for Hawai'i suggests a moderate increase in crime here. The uniform crime report relies on crime reported to police.

The data shows increases in property crime and auto theft rates. Crime on O'ahu and Kaua'i drove most of the increases for 2002, while crime dropped on the Big Island and Maui, Perrone said.

Hawai'i's upward crime trend has captured the attention of criminologists and law enforcement experts, but the rates are far lower than in 1980 and 1995, when crime in the state set records, Perrone said.

State crime began plummeting in 1996 — bottoming out in 1999 — but it's going back up again, he said.

"What it means is that all of the improvement and success of the late 1990s is gone," Perrone said. "That's not good, but it's not like the sky is falling, either."

The rise in statewide crime is surprising to criminologist Meda Chesney-Lind, who said Hawai'i crime data usually mirror national statistics. "There's much made of differences between Hawai'i and the U.S. Mainland, but if you chart the crime rates they are usually identical and it's been that way for 20 years," Chesney-Lind said.

Hawai'i's high tourist population as well as its high population of crystal-meth users might account for the discrepancy between state and national crime rates, she said.

Honolulu Prosecutor Peter Carlisle said factors range from economic downturns that spiked crime and cut social programs, to the criminal justice system's need to deal with overcrowded prisons and the creation of new laws that empathized probation and treatment instead of punishment for ice users.

Tougher prison sentencing would reduce Hawai'i's crime problem by getting criminals off the streets, Carlisle said.

"When criminals go to jail, the crime rates go down," he said. "Criminals are easily devious, self-possessed and intelligent enough to figure out what they can and can't get away with."

But Perrone said there are lots of theories both statewide and nationally to account for what impacts crime, but it's any criminologist's guess, Perrone said.

"Coming up with a definitive answer is like trying to count how many angels can dance on the head of a pin," he said.

Reach Allison Schaefers at aschaefers@honoluluadvertiser.com or 535-8110.