Crime reduction is a priority concern of local government officials, policymakers, and community members alike. Arrests bring a sense of justice to victims and communities, as they often lead to charges and convictions for crimes committed if those arrested are found guilty.
Arrest rates are often considered indicators of police output, as the number serves as one measure of law enforcement's attempt to keep communities safe. When considering arrests, it is important to understand the number of arrests is not the actual crime rate because it will always be different than the actual number of reported crimes. They are two completely different crime statistics.
Here, arrests are defined as a physical arrest. The data presented here represent the number of persons arrested, not offenses or charges filed for each apprehension. This indicator counts multiple arrests of the same person as one. Arrests on warrants from another jurisdiction are not reported by the arresting agency, and are instead reported by the originating agency. Additionally, the data source does not indicate whether the arrest was for a felony or a misdemeanor.
This indicator is important to track because it can expose any disparities by race in the share of people arrested. If there is a disparity in the share of minorities arrested, it should foster a deeper examination to attempt to understand why this might be happening.
This indicator measures the share of adult minorities arrested compared to the share of minorities in the population of Skagit County. Arrests are broken down by Whites, African-Americans, Asians, and Native-Americans. For the purpose of this indicator, Hispanics are classified as Whites. Additional information, including the actual number of arrests in each of the reporting jurisdictions, can be found in the “Download Data” section.
