Model bills updated

We've updated our model bills to end prison-based gerrymandering and shared them with past legislative sponsors.

by Peter Wagner, October 10, 2012

Leah Sakala sending out updated model legislation to previous sponsors of bills to end prison-based gerrymandering.

In consultation with our allies in the voting rights and criminal justice movements, we’ve updated our model bills to end prison-based gerrymandering and shared them with past legislative sponsors.

We’ve updated our principal state legislative bill that requires incarcerated people be counted at home for redistricting purposes. The improvements are all clarifications based on lessons learned during the successful implementation of similar legislation in Maryland and New York.

We’ve also generated a model bill that offers a critical interim step without going so far as to commit a state to count incarcerated people at home during the next redistricting cycle. This bill, the Model Incarcerated Population Data Collection Act, would simply require the Department of Corrections to begin collecting home address information for the incarcerated individuals under state jurisdiction now. The data could be used for various purposes, including reentry planning, criminal justice research, or most importantly, redistricting if the U.S. Census Bureau or an additional state decides to count incarcerated people at home for redistricting purposes in the future.