Wisconsin Policy Research Institute: Milwaukee Can Tolerate More Black Murders

The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute published a new study,  Does Wisconsin Lock Up Too Many Blacks?  The report is authored by John McAdams, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Marquette University.

The implications are astounding. It means that Mark Belling, Charlie Sykes, and Jessica McBride will have to find another rant.

The McAdams report suggests that Milwuakee homicide numbers are within reasonable expectations. In fact, more murders can be tolerated. McAdams's methodology  changes the way we analyze all crime data including homicides.

Based on his model, McAdams finds that the incarceration rate of Wisconsin blacks is within reasonable expectations.

Traditional studies rate Wisconsin among the top states in terms of incarcerating blacks compared to whites.

...Wisconsin ranks near the top in terms of racial disparity. Human Rights Watch shows Wisconsin in fourth place, and The Sentencing Project shows Wisconsin in fifth place, with a disparity ratio of 10.6, right behind Iowa, Vermont, New Jersey, and Connecticut.[v]

Undaunted, McAdams notes:

...But before one gets too upset about the disparity in Wisconsin, one has to ask whether it is actually out of line...(Emphasis added)

McAdams suggest he has a better way of evaluating the subject: Look at the number of blacks in an urban setting, the rate of poverty, and then calculate the expected incarceration rates.*

The conclusion is rich with implications:

So how did Wisconsin fare in this model? Our model predicted a racial disparity of 12.13 in Wisconsin. But the actual figure was 11.58. In other words, Wisconsin has a bit less racial disparity than one would expect. (Emphasis added)

In other words, compared to what we might expect given the concentration of poverty and the number of blacks in urban Wisconsin communities (Milwaukee, etc.), we really do not lock up too many blacks.

The implications are rich with ways of changing our views of Milwaukee murders. The murder rate per 100,000, for New York City in 2005 was 6.6. Milwaukee was 20, Detroit 39, Los Angeles 12.6, and Chicago 15.6.

Using traditional models based on homicides per 100,000 New York looks good, so does L.A.  Those were numbers, we were told, that Milwaukee should emulate.

But with the McAdams approach, we look at poverty, the number of urban blacks, and we can set higher expectations.

Even though we might be approaching Detroit style numbers, not to worry. You are looking at them incorrectly. Using the McAdams Index, we could expect the 2005 homicides to soar to 300 and still be within acceptable limits.

Sykes, Belling, McBride---stop your whining. Given the levels of poverty and number of blacks in Milwaukee, our homicide are well within tolerable rates.

Someone paid for that crap.

*So we created a statistical model of racial disparity, including each state and the District of Columbia. In order to predict the disparity of each state, we simply used the proportion of blacks in the state who live in a central city of a Metropolitan Statistical Area.[vi] It turned out that there is a strong relationship: states with relatively few blacks in the central cities of metropolitan areas had low disparity scores, and those with a heavily urban central city black population showed high ratios. A ten percent increase in the percentage of blacks living in central cities increased the disparity index by about one, and a 30 percent increase kicked it up by about three. We then added, for each state, the percentage of the black population below the poverty level, and the percentage of the white population below the poverty level. We found, as expected, that black poverty drove up the disparity ratio, and white poverty drove it down (as more whites were imprisoned).[vii]

Author's note:  here is my second post on subject responding to Shark and Shepard: Wisconsin Policy Research Institute: Milwaukee Can Tolerate More Black Murders Part II