Crime, Policing and Corrections Across Time
Figure 1 Black and white imprisonment 1925-1996 for US and Wisconsin.
Figure 2 Wisconsin 1996 prison admissions per 100,000 by race, offense group. White arson imprisonments are non-zero but too few to show on the scale of this graph.
Figure 3 Wisconsin 1996 arrests per 100,000 by race, offense group. White arrests for serious crimes are non-zero but too small to show on the scale of this chart.
Figure 4 Wisconsin 1996, decomposition of total black-white difference in per capita imprisonment rates, by offense. Overall, 40% is attributable to arrest differences and 60% to prison/arrest ratios.
Figure 5 In prison in April 2000 per 100,000 population, by race and sex, for counties with more than 1000 non-prisoner blacks
# These counties have too few American Indians for stable estimates; rates are shown for general comparison purpose
1996 New Prison Admissions per 100,000 by race and county of sentencing, for Dane and Milwaukee Counties. Rates per 100,000 population within race, and black/white ratios. “White” is white non-Hispanic.
Milwaukee / Dane / Milwaukee / Dane / Milwaukee / Dane
Total / 58 / 41 / 943 / 2059 / 16.4 / 49.7
Homicide / 2 / 1 / 36 / 14 / 15.1 / 26.2
Assault / 6 / 6 / 88 / 373 / 14.0 / 67.3
Robbery / 7 / 3 / 144 / 256 / 19.9 / 96.8
Sex Assault / 9 / 5 / 67 / 166 / 7.8 / 34.9
Theft, burglary, etc. / 15 / 12 / 215 / 332 / 14.1 / 28.6
Arson / 0 / 0 / 6 / 0 / 18.9
Drugs / 10 / 3 / 300 / 560 / 30.7 / 193.0
Public Order / 1 / 2 / 10 / 41 / 10.6 / 22.4
Derived / 3 / 3 / 29 / 145 / 11.4 / 45.9
Stolen Prop., fraud etc / 3 / 6 / 37 / 145 / 14.0 / 22.9
Other / 2 / 2 / 11 / 28 / 6.7 / 13.1
Figure 6 A life cycle model of crime, showing the intra- and inter-generational effects of imprisonment and aggressive policing
Figure 7 Imprisonment as a cause of crime?
Figure 8 A theoretical model for the interrelation among social conditions, political processes, crime, and corrections policies
Pamela Oliver, Professor of Sociology, University of Wisconsin – Madison. 3/20/01