Gretchen Schuldt
Court Watch

County’s Felony Cases Down Since 2011

Number of cases rose 30% statewide while declining 2% in Milwaukee County.

By , Wisconsin Justice Initiative - Mar 5th, 2019 01:26 pm

Milwaukee County Courthouse. Photo by The original uploader was Sulfur at English Wikipedia [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons

Milwaukee County Courthouse. Photo by The original uploader was Sulfur at English Wikipedia [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons

The number of felony cases opened in Circuit Court statewide continued its steady upward march last year, while the number of felony cases opened in Milwaukee County rose 5 percent, but still did not hit the total opened in the peak years of 2011 and 2012, according to state court statistics.

The figures count cases, not individual charges. The statistics reflect the top charge filed in a case.

In 2011, Milwaukee County accounted for 18 percent of all felony cases in the state (6,121 of 33,103); in 2018, Milwaukee County accounted for 14 percent of state felony cases (6,008 of 43,166).

The number of Milwaukee County felony cases opened last year was down 2 percent, or 113 cases, from the number opened in 2011; statewide, the number of felony cases was up 30 percent, or 10,063, over the same time period.

The reported number of 2017 Milwaukee County felony cases may be several hundred cases low due to a coding error that caused guns and weapons cases to be under-counted.

2018 Milwaukee County felony cases. Image from Wisconsin Justice Initiative.

2018 Milwaukee County felony cases. Image from Wisconsin Justice Initiative.

2018 Wisconsin Circuit Court felony cases. Image from Wisconsin Justice Initiative.

2018 Wisconsin Circuit Court felony cases. Image from Wisconsin Justice Initiative.

Categories: Wisconsin Justice Initiative

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