A Tale of Three States, Part 6: Happy Days
In the previous post in this series, I took the imprisonment data from Indiana, Minnesota, and Wisconsin back to 1991. I’ve been interested, though, in pinpointing when exactly the Minnesota-Wisconsin imprisonment disparity arose, which requires going back further — much further, to the 1950′s. Here are the numbers:
WI Imprisonment Rate (per 1000,000) | Percent Change | MN Imprisonment Rate (per 1000,000) | Percent Change | IN Imprisonment Rate (per 1000,000) | Percent Change | |
1950 | 58.7 | n/a | 63.0 | n/a | 120.4 | n/a |
1955 | 61.6 | 4.9% | 61.6 | -2.2% | 103.1 | -14.4% |
1960 | 69.5 | 12.8% | 60.3 | -2.1% | 116.4 | 12.9% |
1965 | 68.3 | -1.7% | 49.1 | -18.6% | 91.1 | -21.7% |
1970 | 67.3 | -1.5% | 41.7 | -15.1% | 79.6 | -12.6% |
1975 | 65.0 | -3.4% | 42.0 | 0.7% | 73.0 | -8.3% |
1980 | 85.0 | 30.8% | 49.3 | 17.4% | 114.0 | 56.2% |
1985 | 113.6 | 33.6% | 55.9 | 13.4% | 182.3 | 60.0% |
1990 | 152.6 | 34.3% | 71.9 | 28.6% | 229.7 | 26.0% |
1995 | 218.6 | 43.3% | 105.1 | 46.2% | 277.7 | 20.9% |
2000 | 386.9 | 77.0% | 126.8 | 20.6% | 331.0 | 19.2% |
2005 | 392.9 | 1.6% | 173.1 | 36.5% | 399.5 (est) | 20.7% |
2010 | 387.2 | -1.5% | 177.8 | 2.7% | 459.9 | 15.1% |
The numbers tell a remarkable story. Here are some of the parts of that story that stand out for me: