State Imprisonment of Milwaukee County Women: 1990-2012

Abstract

This research study by the Employment and Training Institute provides data on the 4,300 Milwaukee County women who were incarcerated in adult state correctional facilities from January 1990 to January 2012 using the Wisconsin Department of Corrections public inmate data files. Two-thirds of the women were African Americans. whose incarceration numbers spiked in 2003 during the height of the “war on drugs” enforcement years. The heaviest concentrations of imprisoned women were from the poorest neighborhoods on Milwaukee’s near north side and near south side.