Weekly Fiscal Facts are provided to Wisconsin Newspaper Association members by the Wisconsin Policy Forum, the state’s leading resource for nonpartisan state and local government research and civic education. The Wisconsin Policy Forum logo can be downloaded here.
Key pillars of Milwaukee County’s justice system are not functioning in the same way, or at the same level, as they did prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
A recent Wisconsin Policy Forum report found that while the reported incidence of crimes increased slightly throughout Milwaukee County from 2018 to 2022, there were significant declines in police arrests – especially for the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD).
From 2018 to 2020, Part 1 offenses (the most serious type of offenses) totaled between 43,000 and 46,000 annually, before jumping to 54,039 in 2021 and declining back to 46,927 in 2022. The 2021 spike appears to have been driven by one main type of serious crime: motor vehicle theft. One additional important type of crime also was up significantly – murder and non-negligent manslaughter.
In both 2018 and 2019, the 21 Milwaukee County law enforcement agencies made just over 8,000 arrests for Part 1 crimes. In 2020, Part 1 arrests declined to 6,598, with a huge drop occurring early in the pandemic. Notably, arrest numbers for serious crimes have not rebounded, dropping again to 5,518 in 2021 and rising only slightly to 5,942 in 2022 – 27.2% below 2018 levels.
MPD arrests for Part 1 offenses declined from 3,929 in 2018 to 2,483 in 2022 (a 36.8% drop). This drop in MPD arrests began before the pandemic in 2018.
There also was a drop in the rate at which the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s (DA) office brings charges in cases referred to it by law enforcement — and an increasing share of cases being dismissed. For both felonies and misdemeanors, in each year between 2015 and 2019, the charge rate– the share of referrals that result in a charge – was above 45%. Felony charge rates fell from a peak of 48.9% in 2017 to a low of 39.7% in 2022; the misdemeanor charge rate fell to a low of 34.4% in 2022.
In the Milwaukee County Circuit Court, cases are taking much longer, on average, to be resolved. The backlog of felony cases remains much larger than pre-pandemic. The number of pending felony cases ranged from 3,100 to 3,800 in 2018 and 2019, then rose early in the pandemic, peaking at 5,405 in January 2022. Since then, they’ve started to drop, but the 5,056 pending felony cases in December 2022 were just 6.5% below the peak and 59.8% higher than the pre-pandemic low. And in December 2022, at 218 days, the median age of pending felony cases was 77.2% above the pre-pandemic low.
Using data analysis and interviews with justice system officials, the Forum report examined potential causes and contributing factors to these data trends. Many of these issues are interconnected – and originated pre-pandemic, are exacerbated by workforce challenges, or both.
The result: key points of the Milwaukee County justice system pipeline are not functioning as they did, or at the same level they did, prior to the pandemic. State and local leaders must aggressively explore why that is, to what degree it may have impacted public safety, what progress is being made in remedying identified challenges, and whether additional resources or other solutions are required to get the system back on track.
This information is a service of the Wisconsin Policy Forum, the state’s leading resource for nonpartisan state and local government research and civic education. Learn more at wispolicyforum.org.
