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

Massachusetts

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Legislation
Additional reading
2010 Archive:
Organizations in Massachusetts
Resolution Supporters
Testimony

Prison gerrymandering undermines the constitutional principle of "one person, one vote." The Supreme Court requires electoral districts to be based on equal population in order to give each resident the same access to government. But a longstanding flaw in the Census counts incarcerated people as residents of the prison location, even though they can't vote and aren't a part of the surrounding community.

When legislators use unadjusted census data to draw district lines, people who live close to the prison get more of a say in government than everybody else.

The state legislature and some municipalities have previously used Census Bureau counts that tabulated incarcerated people as residents of the prison location, inflating the local population counts used for legislative districts. Padding legislative districts with prison populations artificially enhances the voices of people in those districts at the expense of all districts that do not contain a prison. The issue is further complicated in Massachusetts by the state constitution, which requires the state to use the census as a basis for determining state legislative districts.

Massachusetts has made some progress:

Legislation:

Massachusetts should consider revising the state constitution to allow the legislature to adjust Census data for redistricting purposes in the future, ensuring that prison populations do not add additional unwarranted political clout to the districts that contain them.

During the 2010 redistricting cycle, the legislature took two important actions.

First, the state ensured that they would minimize the impact of prison gerrymandering by looking at the prison populations in the Census data to ensure that the state would not accidentally (or purposely) concentrate prison populations within a small number of districts, as documented in Report from the Chairs of the Special Joint Committee on Redistrictingthe redistricting committee's final report. Senate Chair Stanley Rosenberg and House Chair Michael J. Moran devote about a quarter of their report to reviewing the dilution caused by the Census Bureau's decision to tabulate incarcerated people as residents of the prison location instead of at their legal home addresses, and provide an overview of the committee's efforts to ameliorate its effects. The state continued to use this approach in the 2020 redistricting cycle, once again mitigating the impact of prison gerrymandering in Massachusetts.

Having mitigated the harms of prison gerrymandering in the state districts, Massachusetts then called on the Census Bureau to fix the problem going forward. Massachusetts' joint resolution calling on the Census Bureau to count incarcerated people at their home addressesThe legislature passed a joint resolution "Urging the Census Bureau to Provide Redistricting Data that Counts Prisoners in a Manner Consistent with the Principles of 'One Person, One Vote,'". The resolution was sponsored by Senators Sonia Chang-Diaz and Linda Dorcena Forry. The resolution calls on the Census Bureau to change the way the Bureau tabulates prison populations. By tabulating incarcerated people at their residential addresses, as called for in the resolution, the Bureau would create a national and permanent solution to prison gerrymandering.

In addition to the state's efforts of controlling ending prison gerrymandering in state legislative districts, individual towns are also taking steps to protect their local democracy. Tabulating incarcerated populations as if they resided where the correctional facility is located also causes other problems for towns in Massachusetts, which have achieved individual legislative solutions. The towns of Harvard, Lancaster, Middletown, and Shirley have asked the Governor to introduce special legislation (H03439, H03440, H03468, and 2001 Mass. Acts ch. 133, respectively) so that they would do not need to draw additional precincts for the non-voting prison population.


Additional reading




2010 redistricting cycle, campaign archive:

Organizations in Massachusetts

Massachusetts's progress toward fair districting made in the 2010 redistricting cycle was lead by the following organizations:

  • Delia Vega at Ex-Prisoners and Prisoners Organizing for Community Advancement (EPOCA)
  • Rev. George Walters-Sleyon at The Center for Church and Prison
  • Chuck Wynder at Boston Workers Alliance
  • Brenda Wright at Dēmos
  • Peter Wagner at the Prison Policy Initiative

Local Organizations supporting Resolution S 309/H 3185

On March 27, 2013, more than 20 Massachusetts-based organizations submitted a joint letter urging the Massachusetts Legislature's Joint Committee on Election Law to pass S 309/H 3185, a resolution calling on the Census Bureau to count incarcerated people at their home addresses.

Would your organization like to be added to this list of supporters? Let us know!

Testimony

  • Aleks Kajstura and Brenda Wright, before the Joint Committee on Election Law March 27, 2013
  • Gavi Wolfe of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, before the Joint Committee on Election Law, March 27, 2013
  • Memo of support of the resolution calling on the Census Bureau to end prison gerrymandering by Leah Aden, NAACP LDF, March 27, 2013
  • Peter Wagner and Brenda Wright, before the Special Joint Committee on Redistricting, June 28, 2012
  • Peter Wagner and Brenda Wright, before the Special Joint Committee on Redistricting of the Massachusetts General Court, October 25, 2011
  • Brenda Wright, before the Special Joint Committee on Redistricting of the Massachusetts General Court May 14, 2011
  • Peter Wagner, before the Special Joint Committee on Redistricting of the Massachusetts General Court May 31, 2011


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