Racial Disparities Within Wisconsin's Prison System Some of the Starkest in the Nation

Thursday, April 23rd, 2026 -- 8:01 AM

(Sarah Lehr, Wisconsin Public Radio) The racial disparities within Wisconsin’s prison system are some of the starkest in the nation.

According to Sarah Lehr with Wisconsin Public Radio, that’s according to a recently released report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum, a public policy think tank. Compared to white Wisconsinites, Black Wisconsinites were 12 times more likely to be locked up in state prisons in 2022.

That disparity was the second-highest of any state in the nation, behind only Vermont. “We found that Wisconsin has a pretty similar incarceration rate to the nation overall, but we have a high incarceration rate for the Black population specifically,” Joe Peterangelo, the Wisconsin Policy Forum’s research director, said in an interview.

Multiple factors could be contributing to that disparity. Wisconsin is highly segregated and income levels vary widely by race. “These trends are exacerbated by high rates of poverty in the city of Milwaukee, where over two-thirds of Black Wisconsinites reside,” the report noted.

The report did not examine how heavily police focus their presence on certain areas, but report co-author Andy Tisdel noted that differing rates of enforcement could also be playing a role.

“It’s possible that if law enforcement personnel are deployed to certain areas at higher rates, then crimes in those areas are more likely … to result in an arrest,” said Tisdel, a researcher with the Policy Forum.

Although the number of Black Wisconsinites going to prison in the state has decreased in recent years, African Americans remain overrepresented in the system. At the same time, the report noted that the number of Indigenous Wisconsinites being sent to prison has been trending upward in recent years.

“If these trends continue, we would likely see the American Indian population as the most heavily incarcerated population in the state,” Peterangelo said. The report was completed using funding from the Public Welfare Foundation, a nonprofit focused on criminal justice. More than 23,000 adults are serving time in Wisconsin prisons.

That prison population has inched upward in recent years after falling during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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