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

Radio interviews

by Peter Wagner, December 31, 2009

On Wednesday, Hugh Hamilton of WBAI NYC’s TalkBack! interviewed Demos’ Brenda Wright about prison-based gerrymandering in New York State. The 30 minute segment starts about 30 minutes in to the audio file. Among other topics, Brenda discusses why New York State law says that incarceration does not change a residence and the 13 rural counties that reject the Census Bureau’s prison count when drawing their own district lines.

This morning, Celeste Headlee interviewed Dodge County (Wisconsin) Supervisor Jim Layman and myself on the national morning news program The Take Away. Half of Jim Layman’s county legislative district is incarcerated, and he says the Census is wrong to count incarcerated people from other parts of the state in his district. I discussed the national, state and local efforts to eliminate prison based gerrymandering. The 6 minute segment starts about 22 minutes in to the file.

Related briefings:

  1. Upstate New York radio asks: Are state prisoners local residents? +
  2. North Country Public Radio identifies the biggest impact of end to prison-based gerrymandering +
  3. What Is Prison-Based Gerrymandering? +

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