Help End Prison Gerrymandering Prison gerrymandering funnels political power away from urban communities to legislators who have prisons in their (often white, rural) districts. More than two decades ago, the Prison Policy Initiative put numbers on the problem and sparked the movement to end prison gerrymandering.

Can you help us continue the fight? Thank you.

—Peter Wagner, Executive DirectorDonate

Ignoring overwhelming consensus to count incarcerated people at home, the U.S. Census Bureau released its proposal to count incarcerated persons at the wrong location once again for the 2020 Census. Stakeholders interested in a fair and accurate Census count in 2020 should make sure to submit comments to the Bureau by August 1 to explain why it must revise this proposal and count incarcerated persons at home in the 2020 Census.

Comments can be emailed by August 1 to Karen Humes, Chief, Population Division at POP.2020.Residence.Rule@census.gov

A sample of the comment letters submitted in 2015 to the Census Bureau calling for an end to prison gerrymandering

This page reprints a sample of the comment letters submitted to the Census Bureau in support of ending prison gerrymandering. These letters were in response to a Federal Register notice published in May 2015. The Bureau received 262 comments about where to count people. A majority of the comments (162) concerned the residence of incarcerated people, and 96% of these (155) opposed the Bureau's current approach of counting incarcerated people as if they were residents of the facility.

The Census Bureau published their own analysis of the comments and they published all of the comments in a heavily redacted privacy-conscious form. Because the letters are far more readable and persuasive in their original form, we are posting here the letters of 121 organizations and individuals who generously sent us copies of their letters. For a sample of the letters submitted in 2016, see our FRN 2016 page.



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