Arrest Trends in Milwaukee, 1980-2011–Part One
Earlier this month, the ACLU released this interesting report on arrests for marijuana possession. The ACLU found a steady increase since 1990 in the number of arrests nationally for possession of pot. By 2010, arrests for this crime had come to account for nearly half of all drug arrests. Moreover, the ACLU also found that racial disparities in marijuana arrests increased right along with the number of arrests, even though surveys indicate that whites and blacks use marijuana at about equal rates.
Neither Wisconsin nor Milwaukee County performed well on the racial disparity front. Statewide, blacks are six times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than whites, which is considerably higher than the national average of 3.73. Milwaukee County’s disparity number was also above the national average at 4.7.
Coincidentally, at about the same time the ACLU released its report, the federal government’s Bureau of Justice Statistics unveiled a new on-line, interactive arrest-data tool, which permits detailed searches of arrest data from individual cities dating back to 1980. I thought it would be interesting to examine Milwaukee’s numbers over time. I focused on arrests by the Milwaukee Police Department, which differed from the ACLU’s focus on county-level data. (The MPD is only one of several law enforcement agencies in Milwaukee County, albeit the single largest.)
The first graph below shows the annual number of arrests by the MPD by race. Unfortunately, no data were available for 1986, 1998-2000, or 2004; otherwise, every year from 1980 through 2011 is included.