Site menu:
The Census Bureau should not be enabling prison-based gerrymandering
This website documents the work of the Prison Policy Initiative. We examine a once-obscure Census Bureau glitch that undermines our democracy and suggest workable federal, state and local solutions that would reduce the harm caused by the Census Bureau's prison miscount.
The Census Bureau counts people in prison as if they were residents of the communities where they are incarcerated, even though they remain legal residents of the places they lived prior to incarceration. As Census data is used to apportion political power at all levels of government, crediting thousands of disproportionately urban and minority men to other communities has staggering implications for modern American democracy.
In New York State, for example, one out of every three people who moved to upstate New York in the 1990s actually “moved” into a newly constructed prison. The State bars people in prison from voting, but their presence in the Census boosts the population of the upstate districts whose legislators favor prison expansion. Without this phantom population, 7 upstate New York State Senate districts would not meet minimum population requirements and would have to be redrawn.
Our 2002 report, Importing Constituents: Prisoners and Political Clout in New York was the first district-by-district analysis of the impact of the prison miscount on state legislative redistricting and the first to suggest workable policy solutions.
In the years since, we’ve extended our New York research to examine how inaccurate Census data has caused democratic distortion in more than 11 states and 200 counties.
Prison Policy Initiative accomplishments
Our research and advocacy have made the prisoner miscount the central controversy of the 2010 Census. Our work has:
- been endorsed by the New York Times editorial board in 11 editorials, including including Phantom Voters in New York,Prison-Based Gerrymandering, and Phantom Voters, Thanks to the Census.
- led the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to suggest that New York’s practice of drawing legislative districts based on the Census data violates the Voting Rights Act.
- won the endorsement of the Census Bureau’s technical advisors at the National Research Council of the National Academies.
- inspired state legislators in New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Illinois to draft reform legislation.
- launched a grassroots campaign with federal, state and local elected officials, democracy advocates and criminal justice reformers to change how the U.S. Census counts people in prison.
Census Bureau’s Counting of Prisoners Benefits Some Rural Voting Districts
By Sam Roberts, October 23, 2008
Danny R. Young, a 53-year-old backhoe operator for Jones County in eastern Iowa, was elected to the Anamosa City Council with a total of two votes — both write-ins, from his wife and a neighbor.
While the Census Bureau says Mr. Young’s ward has roughly the same population as the city’s three others, or about 1,400 people, his constituents wield about 25 times more political clout.
That is because his ward includes 1,300 inmates housed in Iowa’s largest penitentiary — none of whom can vote. Only 58 of the people who live in Ward 2 are nonprisoners. That discrepancy has made Anamosa a symbol for a national campaign to change the way the Census Bureau counts prison inmates.
Read the rest of the article: Census Bureau’s Counting of Prisoners Benefits Some Rural Voting Districts
We also have more information about some of the places cited in the New York Times article:
- St. Lawrence County, NY
- Lake County, TN is discussed in our report Phantom Constituents in Tennessee's Boards of County Commissioners
- Chippewa County, WI
- 21 Counties that have at least 21% of their populations behind bars
- A map of the Anamosa districts:
- Finally, if you live in a small community with a large prison, be sure to check out our Democracy Toolkit to determine if -- and to what degree -- prison populations are distorting your access to local government.