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.

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Bogus data pumps up the rural population

by Peter Wagner, September 15, 2003

graphical display of counties in New York showing how much of each county's reported population is prisoners

The presence of a prison in a rural area can have a huge impact on Census Bureau statistics about the town or county. In a number of counties in New York, prisons can make up more than 2% of the county’s population, and in the case of Franklin County, prisoners constitute almost 11% of the population reported to the Census.

Related briefings:

  1. Rural citizens call for change in how Census counts prisoners +
  2. Rural areas have 20% of population, but 60% of new prisons +
  3. The distortion of Census data caused by counting people in prisons is “Too Big To Ignore” +

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