Milwaukee County's declining corrections population

With all of the doom and gloom surrounding the finances of Milwaukee County government, it is certainly worthy of attention when some promising fiscal news emerges from the Courthouse. Consequently, when the Public Policy Forum learned that the inmate population at the county's two adult detention facilities had plummeted, we took notice.

In researching the matter, we found that not only had the adult population declined in recent years, but the number of delinquent youth housed in state corrections institutions had dropped even more dramatically. And, upon investigating the dollar savings associated with these declining populations, we found even more eye-opening numbers.

Today, the Forum published a Research Brief documenting the steep drop in Milwaukee County detention populations and spending. In addition to laying out the numbers, we recommend actions by county leaders to determine why these trends are occurring, how they are impacting public safety, and what might be done to sustain them. Among the report's key findings:

• The average number of adults and juveniles in detention each day was 2,892 in 2010, by far the lowest total in the past five years, and 16% lower than the average of 3,448 detainees held each day in 2008.


• On the juvenile detention side, the average daily population (ADP) of Milwaukee County youth housed in state juvenile corrections institutions was 170, or 35% lower than the average of 263 just two years earlier. In addition, the ADP in the county’s own juvenile detention facility decreased 17% in that period (from 106 to 88), and the monthly average of active cases in the juvenile system plummeted 39% (from 2,971 to 1,823).


• On the adult side, the total number of individuals under detention and/or the supervision of the Milwaukee County Sheriff declined by 455 between 2007 and 2010, a 14% decrease.


• The reductions in detainee populations have been major contributors to substantial property tax levy reductions in the budgets of both the county’s Delinquency and Court Services Division (DCSD) and Office of the Sheriff. At DCSD, property tax levy expenditures decreased from $19.8 million to $12.8 million between 2008 and 2010, while property tax expenditures on adult detention in the Sheriff’s budget decreased from $101 million to $97 million during the same period.

The Research Brief explains that there are several competing points of view among law enforcement officials and others as to why the steep declines in detainee populations are occurring and whether they are desirable from a public safety perspective. Because of these competing views and a lack of available data to determine who is correct, the report recommends a series of actions by elected and justice system officials to step up data collection efforts and solicit informed discussion.

In particular, this is the type of issue that should be carefully deliberated by the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors. In a 2010 report on the county's governance structure, the Forum observed that other county boards tend to place "greater focus on nuts-and-bolts administrative strategies – how to more effectively reduce jail populations, process individuals through the courts, achieve higher bond ratings, fill potholes – and less on ideological debate."

The decline in detention populations, therefore, not only gives supervisors a great opportunity to save money, but also to undertake the type of rigorous policy oversight that ought to be a norm at committee meetings and budget hearings.

The Research Brief - which was made possible by grant funding from the Helen Bader Foundation - can be accessed here, and our media release here.

People Speak Poll: Budget Debate Trumps Jobs

The latest People Speak Poll, conducted by the Public Policy Forum and the Center for Urban Initiatives and Research at UWM in partnership with The Business Journal Serving Greater Milwaukee, finds that the state budget ranks as the most important issue in the minds of southeast Wisconsin residents. The poll of 400 residents of Milwaukee, Waukesha, Ozaukee, and Washington Counties was conducted in late February and early March, at the peak of the debate over the budget repair bill. Four previous polls over the past two years had found jobs were the issue of most concern.

Analysis and full results of the latest poll, along with those of previous polls, are available at http://www.peoplespeakpoll.org/.

Other findings:

• The region's citizens are less optimistic about the nation's economic future and Milwaukee's eocnomic future than they were in September 2009.


• No major change in opinion has occurred since September 2009 with regard to state government--40% of residents feel the state is on the right track.


• Crime in the City of Milwaukee is not perceived by most to have declined over the past year, despite the actual drop in crime.


• Half of respondents consider the north side of Milwaukee to be an unsafe place to be in the middle of the afternoon.


• One in five respondents feel unsafe in the middle of the afternoon at Mayfair and Grand Avenue Malls.

Experimental policy: when social science trumps politics

The "broken windows" theory of policing proposes that crime arises out of certain conditions and that tolerance of misdemeanor crimes can result in greater incidences of more serious crimes. If crime-ridden neighborhoods are cleaned up, if graffiti and jaywalking and loitering ordinances are enforced, the broken windows theory predicts violent and property crimes will abate in those neighborhoods.

As a theory, it sounds reasonable, and it has in fact been put into place as policy in many cities across the globe, including New York (where it is known as "zero-tolerance policing"), Boston, and yes, Milwaukee. Some of the cities saw crime rates drop dramatically, some saw smaller improvements, and some saw no change. So, as theories go, maybe it's less like a scientific theory, to be proven or disproven, and more like a philosophy, unable to be proved. (And of course, some of this variance in success is probably explained by the fact that not every police force is willing or able to implement all the elements of the practice and other neighborhood improvement efforts may have played a part, as well.)

Policymakers and public safety officers in Lowell, MA were adherents to the philosophy, but open to the possibility that, as a theory, it could be tested. So they worked with researchers from Harvard and Suffolk universities to implement a local policy experiment--something extremely rare in public policy research.

The experiment involved implementing "broken windows" policing practice in some high crime neighborhoods and policing as usual in others. Yes, you read that right, in some high crime neighborhoods they resisted making a policy change they believed in, so that they could measure the effect of the change in other neighborhoods. Policy effectiveness is most often measured after implementation and usually by third-party researchers such as academics. Local policymakers testing out a policy themselves, prior to adoption, is not the norm.

Why is this not done more often? Well, as you can imagine, no matter how the experiment turns out, testing a policy is quite a risk, politically. If the policy is proven not to work, local critics will not only argue time and money was wasted on it, all critics will now have data as ammunition against the policy. If the policy is proven to have a positive effect, there's an argument that time and money were wasted in waiting to fully implement it. For elected officials, research is not often worth the political risk. When it comes to crime, there are obviously other, more imperative risks as well.

Beyond the political risks, there are other reasons officials tend not to experiment with policy. At the local level, there is often neither the time nor money to give a new policy a test-run. At the state level, pilot projects are more common but, rather than being designed as empirical tests of effectiveness, they are usually seen as ways to phase-in implementation of new policy.

Kudos to Lowell for using scientific method to make policy decisions (the experiment confirmed their hypothesis and they have implemented the new policy) and for creating data that other policymakers can utilize. More municipalities should follow their lead. After all, in times of tough budgets, having reliable data can help when making the hard decisions.

Crime Prevention Could Get Brainy

A new study from the University of Cincinnati strengthens the evidence that lead exposure is linked to criminal behavior, and could refocus the spotlight on lead and juvenile crime in Milwaukee. The first study to follow lead-exposed children from before birth into adulthood, it shows that even relatively low levels of lead permanently damage the brain. The least-contaminated children in the study, with levels near average for U.S. children, still showed a link between criminal behavior and lead exposure.

Lead increases the very behaviors that can predict aggressive and violent behavior in children: distractibility, impulsiveness, restlessness, and a shortened attention span. Researchers found that every 5-microgram-per-deciliter increase in blood lead levels at age 6 was accompanied by a 50% increase in the incidence of violent crimes later in life. A related study found that those with the highest blood levels of lead during childhood had brains that were 1.2% smaller than normal.

Locally, Milwaukee has a nasty history with lead. A 2005 Journal Sentinel story reported the incidence of childhood lead poisoning in Milwaukee at 9.8%, six times the national average of 1.6%. In the past decade, an estimated 19,000 Milwaukee children younger than six have tested positive for elevated lead levels. Milwaukee’s high rates are attributed to the city’s older housing stock, which contains lead-based paint. A map of lead in local housing darkens the city’s poorest neighborhoods with black dots indicating over 8,000 lead-poisoned children per dot. Progress has been made in Milwaukee, which has a variety of lead abatement efforts. The number of poisoned children under age 6 dropped from a height of 31.9% to 9.8% between 1997 and 2004.

The Cincinnati study indicates that lead abatement services and screenings are an investment with large long-term payoffs. Funding lead abatement has the potential to save money in the long-run on expensive juvenile detention and special education services, and could potentially keep more people off welfare and increase their incomes over a lifetime.

Such long-term investment arguments parallel evidence recently presented by local police and sheriffs as well as the national group Fight Crime Invest in Kids that high-quality early childhood education leads to crime reduction (and cost savings) in the long-run due to positive influences on still-developing brain neurology. The future of crime prevention might include neurologists, preschool teachers and lead abatement specialists working together, while economists chart the return on investment.

More immigration, less crime

Could Milwaukee's relatively low immigration rate (7.7% foreign-born) be partially responsible for its stubbornly high crime rate? That is a new theory being tested by scholars and criminologists throughout the U.S.

One study, was conducted by Harvard University sociology professor Robert J. Sampson, and followed 3,000 youths (aged 18-25) in 180 Chicago neighborhoods from 1995 to 2002. The findings revealed that Latinos perpetrated violence 10% less than their white counterparts. The researcher also found the odds of perpetrating violence were 85% higher for blacks compared with whites. Surprisingly, the reasons behind these disparities were largely not economic.

"That's not to say that the socioeconomic context you grow up in doesn't help explain the gap," says Sampson, "but in terms of family structure and characteristics, what matters instead of poverty are a family's years of residence in the neighborhood, having married parents, and living in an immigrant neighborhood, all of which reduce a youth's risk of engaging in violence." For instance, the study attributes the low rate of violence among Mexican Americans to a combination of factors: that group's high proportion of married-couple families, residence in neighborhoods with high concentrations of immigrants, and individual's first- or second-generation immigrant status. PRB

The relationship of high-immigration and relatively low violent crime rates seems to explain trends in cities including New York, Miami, Chicago and Los Angeles. Conversely, "low-immigration" cities with relatively high crime rates include Milwaukee, Detroit, Baltimore and Philadelphia.

Of course, some cities don't fit this model at all - Boston has seen an up-tick in crime since 1999 despite high levels of immigration. Some skeptics also point to the fact that many of these immigrant neighborhoods have benefited from "community policing" tactics, which could also be the reason why these neighborhoods are showing reductions in crime.

Successfully reducing violent crime rates is a complex and multi-faceted proposition, no doubt. But experts seem to be suggesting that one such tool to reduce crime rates would be to encourage more immigration, not less.

Are you your own worst enemy?

The Business Journal recently reported the findings from an Aurora Health Care public health survey ("Violence cited as top city health problem.")

Violence was stated as the city of Milwaukee’s top health problem followed by alcohol and drug use and chronic disease. The article states 58% of those surveyed felt violence was one of the 3 biggest health issues Milwaukee faces. However, obesity-related diseases, such as heart disease and cancer, are the main concern of insurance companies (Fischer, 2007). So what should one be more concerned about in Milwaukee? Violence or chronic disease? The answer may depend upon your age group.


The Wisconsin Interactive Statistics on Health from the Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services allows users to query for the most prevalent causes of mortality in our seven county area. The data from the graph above suggests people’s fears of violence as a health concern may be warranted if you are young. Ages 15-29 are more likely to be killed by violence versus cancer or heart disease, and they are even more likely to die in an accident.

There may be several reasons why more people in the survey feared violence versus chronic disease. The immediate danger of someone being the victim of a criminal act may be more frightening than the prolonged danger of developing a chronic disease. Lets say you were to put a person in a room with a serial killer and a doughnut; chances are your test subject would be much more fearful of the murderer. However, in the real world we are more likely to be tempted by junk food versus chased by violent criminals. It may be that people are more fearful of what others may do to them versus what they may do to themselves. Also, media attention to violence may instill fear among viewers more so than warnings about lifestyle habits leading to certain chronic diseases. Often times the six o'clock news will show a crime scene with victims being hauled off in body bags or stretchers, but they often do not show the actual victims of chronic disease fatalities.

Also check out the national odds of dying of certain diseases and injuries.