Milwaukee Journal
WI's racial disparities...

Origininal article

Wisconsin's racial imprisonment disparities in drug cases
By Derrick Nunnally
Tuesday, Dec 4 2007, 10:50 AM

As described in this Wisconsin State Journal story, a study released today by a Washington, D.C. agency that uses a description of itself as "one of the 25 most quoted progressive non-profits in the country" found that three Wisconsin counties are among the top 100 nationally for racial disparities in drug defendants sent to prison.

Their findings, which are presented as a PDF here, including a table of the ratio of black defendants imprisoned for drug cases compared to white ones for 198 counties with populations over 250,000, using statistics from 2002.


The #3 county on that list: Dane, where the researchers found 97 African-Americans going to prison for every white one for comparable offenses.

Also turning up in the top 100 of imbalances: at #46, Waukesha, where the drug incarceration rate among black defendants was 24 times that of white ones, and at #92, Milwaukee, where the ratio was 15-to-1.

In the body of the study, the Justice Policy Institute explores some of the causes of the disparities. According to the study, they happen despite whites and blacks using and selling drugs at similar rates — which hold up across state lines.