With this post, we’re reviewing the distribution of civil cases from the Third District for the years 1990 through 1999.  First, let’s look at the population distribution.

As of the 2000 census, the Third District was large geographically – encompassing fifteen counties – but small by population (only half the Second District).  Will County accounted for 34.38% of the Third District’s population.  Peoria had 12.55% and Rock Island was 10.22%, but all the other counties were below ten percent (led by Tazewell at 8.79%, LaSalle at 7.63% and Kankakee county at 7.11%).

We commented yesterday that there’s no particular reason to expect caseloads to track the population distribution all that closely, and the Third District numbers illustrate that.  Will County is a third of the Third’s population, but produced only five cases during the nineties.  Peoria County had 15 cases and LaSalle County had seven.  Rock Island accounted for four cases and Tazewell had three.

Tomorrow, we’ll review the data for the Fourth District.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Ron Frazier (no changes).