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

Information about National Academies report: Once, Only Once, and in the Right Place: Residence Rules in the Decennial Census

On September 14, 2006, the National Research Council of the National Academies released its report Once, Only Once, and in the Right Place: Residence Rules in the Decennial Census. The report was prepared at the request of the Census Bureau and was written by the Panel on Residence Rules in the Decennial Census and edited by Daniel L. Cork and Paul R. Voss.

One major problem the panelists addressed was the subject addressed on this website, how prisoners should be counted in the decennial census. The report found that the "evidence of political inequities in redistricting that can arise due to the counting of prisoners at the prison location is compelling."

This page contains links to the National Research Council's report and many of the key materials they relied on to make their recomendations.

The report

National Academies press release: Census Bureau Should Improve 'Residence Rules'.
Read/order the Once, Only Once, and in the Right Place report.
Information about the panel and its meetings: Residence Rules in the Decennial Census Panel on its National Academies Current Project Page.
Search report:

Prison Policy Initiative submissions to the panel

Proposed finding and recommendation [PDF] submitted to the Residence Rules in the Decennial Census Panel, at the National Academies, June 2, 2005, Prepared by Peter Wagner, Eric Lotke, and Andrew Beveridge.
Feasibility of using administrative records or personal surveys to enumerate people in correctional facilities [PDF], Peter Wagner and Eric Lotke (memorandum), December 6, 2004.

Selected Prison Policy Initiative reports cited by the National Academies in their report

Why the Census Bureau can and must start collecting the home addresses of incarcerated people
Submitted by Peter Wagner, Eric Lotke and Andrew Beveridge
to the U.S. Census Bureau on February 10, 2006
in advance of the Bureau's report to the Appropriations Committee on using prisoners' homes of record in the Census
Prisoners of the Census: Electoral and Financial Consequences of Counting Prisoners Where They Go, Not Where They Come From [PDF]
by Eric Lotke and Peter Wagner,
Pace Law Review Volume 24, Number 2, Spring 2004
Published April 2005
Importing Constituents: Prisoners and Political Clout in New York
by Peter Wagner, April 22, 2002