The Center for Public Affairs at The University of Nebraska at Omaha put out a report on Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Nebraska recently. Collaborating with the UNO School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, the report shows data of arrests in the entire state of Nebraska from 2014 through 2019. The data reveals that there are significant racial disparities with regard to who is arrested in Nebraska in contrast to the actual size of any given ethnicity in the state, with the disparities being particularly steep among African American and Native Americans.
CPAR wrote that African Americans account for 19% of total arrests in the state, despite being only 5% of the total Nebraska population. This stands in contrast to the arrests of White Nebraskans, which are 76% with white people making up 89% of Nebraska's total population. The arrest rate for American Indians or Alaska Natives in Nebraska is 3% and the American Indians make up 1% of the state's population. According to World Population Review - the total population for the state of Nebraska is 1,952,570. Following this model and the CPAR data, the total population of African Americans in Nebraska would be slightly under 98,000. The total population of Native Americans would be slightly more than 19,500.
According to the Nebraska Crime Commission - the total number of arrests in the lone year of 2019 was 66,355 - cited by the Crime Commission as a total decrease of 7.2% from 2018. Following CPAR's data and the World Population Review's estimate, roughly 12,600 arrests in 2019 would have been African Americans. This would have been a little less than 2000 arrests in 2019 for Native Americans, and a little over 504,00 White Nebraskans. The commission says that the most prominent crime people were arrested for in 2019 was drug abuse violations. The NCC cites 12,200 arrests for drug charges.
Despite being the most populous county in Nebraska by a wide margin, Douglas County does not have the highest percentage of arrests for African Americans. CPAR reports that the county with the highest percentage of African American arrests is Seward County, which contains Seward and Milford, with roughly 35 percent of the African American population in that county having been arrested in 2019. Second is Buffalo County, containing Kearney, with roughly 34 percent of its African American population having been arrested in that same year. After those two its Lincoln County, which contains with roughly 27 percent, Lancaster County with roughly 22 percent, and Madison County, which contains Norfolk, and Washington County, which contains Blair, with slightly less than Lancaster County. Douglas County ranks 14th on this list with roughly 13 percent, and Sarpy County ranks 21st with roughly 7 percent.
The highest percentage of arrests for Native Americans, according to CPAR, is in Dawes County, which contains Chadron and Crawford. Sheridan County, which contains Whiteclay, was second with 22%. Lancaster County's percentage was a little over 17% and Douglas County's was a little over 7% and Sarpy County's was a little over 1.5%.
The CPAR report also covers the racial disparities in Nebraska prisons. The report says African Americans account for 28% of the prison population with white people accounting for 52% and other ethnicities accounting for the remaining 20% while only collectively accounting for 8% of the state's population.
The CPAR report also covers racial disparities in community based correctional programs. The report found that African Americans were underrepresented with only 13% in Community Based Intervention. The report states that White people, Asian people and Native Americans all have similar rates of representative on community based correctional programs to their percentage of arrests.
The CPAR report concludes stating that the sources of R.E.D. (Racial and Ethnic Disparities) in Nebraska have yet to be identified, and that should be one of the next goals. The report cites potential sources of R.E.D. as implicit bias (or attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions and decisions in an unconscious manner, also called implicit social cognition), state sentencing guidelines, use of cash bail, and not having enough money to pay for a good legal defense.
The CPAR report was not able to evaluate the statistics for arrests and incarceration of Latinos in Nebraska with the data they had available.
(Credit for Photo goes to WOWT 6 News)