PORTLAND – Maine’s crime rate has fallen 19 percent in the past decade, but its prison and jail populations have swelled by 50 percent during the same period, according to a new report.

That seeming paradox is among the dozens of findings in the 2003 Crime and Justice Data Book, an 80-page report that looks at statistics and trends about crime, arrests and incarceration in the state.

The study found that female arrests are on the rise, as are juvenile drug arrests. Maine’s crime rate is 35 percent lower than the national average, but is higher than New Hampshire and Vermont.

Mark Rubin, a researcher at the Muskie Institute of Public Service and the author of the study, said the report is intended to be used by legislators, law enforcement, nonprofits and others as an informational tool.

The study brings together statistics from state and federal criminal justice reports, jails, prisons and other sources, but does not offer solutions.

“We did this as a means of showing trends and showing areas that could be of interest to policy makers,” Rubin said.

While Maine’s overall crime rate fell over the past decade, the number of females arrested increased by 60 percent. Much of that increase is blamed on drug offenses, which rose 163 percent.

As for juveniles, arrests have fallen every year since 1996. Juvenile drug arrests, however, have gone up 263 percent over the past decade.

Perhaps the most startling of the findings, however, is the different directions between crime and incarceration rates.

Overall crime fell in all but three of Maine’s 16 counties from 1994-2002, but Maine’s prison’s population is growing fast. In 2002, Maine had the largest increase – 11.5 percent – in prison population in the nation.

Waldo County Sheriff Scott Story, the president of the Maine Sheriff’s Association, said his jail is overcrowded not because more people are being arrested, but because their sentences are longer than they used to be.

“That’s what we’re seen in my county,” Story said. “Other counties have seen that, and other counties have increased their number of arrests as well.”

Paul Vestal, chairman of the Maine Criminal Justice Commission, said new laws mandating jail time and longer sentences have helped push the prison and jail populations higher.

“The crime rate’s gone down, but we as a state have implemented laws that lock people up for longer periods of time,” he said.

The Crime and Data Justice Book’s release comes shortly after the release of a 128-page report by the Commission to Improve the Sentencing, Supervision, Management and Incarceration of Prisoners.

The panel is trying to reduce the number of people sent to jail and the frequency with which convicts commit new crimes.

The commission found that overcrowding is caused by longer probation periods and more violations, more drug convictions, inadequate substance abuse treatment, too few programs for juveniles, inadequate re-entry programs and a shortage of treatment for mentally ill people.

AP-ES-04-20-04 1549EDT