“You don’t live here (except on Census day),” say local politicians

Except on Census day, prison district politicians do not believe that incarcerated people are residents of their districts.

by Peter Wagner, February 15, 2010

With the Census almost here, some politicians have drawn their attention to defending the Census Bureau’s practice of counting incarcerated people as residents of correctional facilities in their districts. The politicians’ aim is to claim as many people in the area as residents of their district. Claiming more people — even if they can’t vote and are legal residents of other parts of the state — can be a benefit at redistricting time. Having an artificially high population allows them to create districts with fewer real constituents to be accountable to.

The politicians’ defense of the Census rule for prison counting doesn’t hold water. One argument they make goes like this: Sometimes people in prison use the local hospitals, so we should be able to claim them as residents. But people who are passing through town and staying in local hotels temporarily use the local hospitals too.

As with every other group the Census counts, what matters is whether people in prison are considered residents of the community that contains the prison. Except for incarcerated people, the residence rule the Census uses consistently results in counting people at their homes.

I’ve frequently written about the New York State Constitution’s definition of residence, which explicitly says that confinement in a public prison does not change a person’s residence. Despite the official constitutional definition, I’ve also looked to see whether county officials actually consider incarcerated people to be residents of their communities. And the result?

When the Census is not underway and the news cameras are not around, no politician treats the people in local prison cells as residents or constituents.

Cheating at the ballot box is not how you fix other injustices

Prisons don't pay property taxes. But violating the state and federal constitutions by cheating during the redistricting process is not the solution.

by Peter Wagner, February 11, 2010

I usually don’t publish and respond to anonymous email that comes in, but I just received a message that almost perfectly sums up the talking points of the supporters of prison-based gerrymandering. While I can’t confirm it’s authenticity beyond the fact that it was sent from upstate New York, this is an illustration of some of the misunderstandings that underlie the debate about ending prison-based gerrymandering in the state:

Reform is about political power and fairness, does not affect funding

Rebutting misinformation, I explain in a letter to the editor that revising the Census and drawing fair districts would not affect a prison town's funding.

by Peter Wagner, February 7, 2010

A state-wide campaign is underway to end prison-based gerrymandering in New York State. Unfortunately, a misinformation campaign threatens those efforts. Today, the Elmira Star-Gazette in upstate New York printed
my letter to the editor:

Mayor Tonello is concerned that a bill to change how prisoners are counted for redistricting purposes would hurt Elmira’s budget. [" Officials: Changing how census counts inmates would hurt region", February 1] This concern is misplaced.

Prison town says census count cost funds

The prison miscount's impact on funding is small, and in some cases, claiming incarcerated people in the census costs prison towns money.

by Peter Wagner, January 20, 2010

While it is important that everyone be counted in the Census for reasons of both democracy and funding, I’ve long argued that where incarcerated people are counted has only a very minor affect on funding.

Somerset County Maryland paper endorses call to end prison-based gerrymandering

The Daily Times on Maryland's Lower Eastern Shore has endorsed a call for Somerset County to base future legislative districts on the resident population.

by Peter Wagner, November 24, 2009

The Daily Times in Salisbury, Maryland on the Lower Eastern Shore, has endorsed a call for Somerset County to base future county legislative districts on the resident — not prison — population.

An NAACP- and ACLU-led group of county leaders and community members, called the Somerset County Task Force on Diversity, has called for the county to explore the possibility of disregarding the population at the state prison when the county next updates its county legislative lines after the 2010 Census. The local newspaper has endorsed this call because over 40 percent of the county’s population is African-American, but no African-American has ever been elected to the county commission. The county agreed to settle a voting rights lawsuit and draw a majority African-American district in the mid-1980s. Unfortunately, a new large prison in the remedial district resulted in the African-American resident population being split among multiple districts, leaving the county without a true majority African-American district.

What the census will get wrong

by Aleks Kajstura, November 6, 2009

The U.S. Census is once again gearing up to count incarcerated people in the wrong place. This census data is soon going to be used to redraw districts at all levels of government throughout the country.

In “What the census will get wrong,” Mary Sanchez, of the Kansas City Star, writes, emphasizing the inconsistency between the Census Bureau’s “patriotic pitches to comply,” and the Census’ method of counting people in prison. According to Sanchez, we’re told that “[e]very breathing soul must be tallied during the massive federal endeavor, the national headcount taken every decade. The census is central to the functioning of our democracy….”

Sanchez correctly notes, however, that the Census reassigns prison populations. The Census data allows legislative districts to pad their numbers using disenfranchised constituents pulled from remote cities. The communities that have high incarceration rates lose their currently incarcerated residents in this count. Sanchez writes:

Criminals forfeit a lot when they get locked up. They lose the right to vote, in all but two states. They lose daily interaction with loved ones and the chance to engage in meaningful work.

The communities of origin for those incarcerated should not be similarly punished.

Prison count has downside for prison town

by Peter Wagner, September 30, 2009

In a Tribune-Star (Terre Haute, Indiana) column, Mark Bennett argued that the Census Bureau’s decision to credit the population of the federal prison to the city of Terre Haute was a boon to the region. But while celebrating one regional benefit, he missed a bigger problem for democracy at home, as I point out in my letter to the editor:

It is sometimes tempting to portray the controversy over where incarcerated people should be counted as a “tug-of-war between cities and rural communities”, but that runs the very real risk of obscuring how the current Census policy hurts rural communities right now.

The impact of prison-based gerrymandering on state legislative districts is real and significant, but the impact on local legislatures, such as county boards and city councils, is even more pronounced. Because the district sizes tend to be relatively small in local government, a single prison can have a significant effect. It is for that reason that many of the people working the hardest for Census reform are rural people who live near, but not immediately adjacent to, large prisons.

NAACP calls for end to prison-based gerrymandering at national convention

by Peter Wagner, July 17, 2009

On Tuesday, the delegates to the NAACP’s 100th annual convention approved a resolution calling for an end to prison-based gerrymandering:

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the NAACP, on principle, decries the enumeration of prisoners as local residents as violation of our nation’s fundamental one person one vote ethos of representational democracy, harkening back to the disgraceful three fifths era of constitutionally sanctioned slavery; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the NAACP calls on the U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of the Census to enumerate prisoners within census blocks where domiciled at their time of arrest; and

BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED, that NAACP units call upon their Congressional representatives to effect such a permanent change to the Census Bureau enumeration procedures.

Three timely actions that could help end prison-based gerrymandering

by Peter Wagner, December 12, 2008

The next Census will be taken 14 months after our next President is sworn in. Counting the entire population, just once and in the right place, is an incredibly complex undertaking with profound implications for American democracy. It must be done right.

New York Times profiles Anamosa Iowa, where a district is almost entirely people in prison

by Peter Wagner, October 24, 2008

Sam Roberts of the New York Times has written an excellent article about Anamosa Iowa where a prison amounts to 96% of a city council ward:

Danny R. Young, a 53-year-old backhoe operator for Jones County in eastern Iowa, was elected to the Anamosa City Council with a total of two votes — both write-ins, from his wife and a neighbor.

While the Census Bureau says Mr. Young’s ward has roughly the same population as the city’s three others, or about 1,400 people, his constituents wield about 25 times more political clout.

That is because his ward includes 1,300 inmates housed in Iowa’s largest penitentiary — none of whom can vote. Only 58 of the people who live in Ward 2 are nonprisoners. That discrepancy has made Anamosa a symbol for a national campaign to change the way the Census Bureau counts prison inmates.

The article highlights the efforts of Bertha Finn, who organized a referendum last year which abolished the prison district by switching the small city to an at-large system of government. I’m quoted in the article cheering the people of Anamosa on:

“The people of Anamosa have the right idea,” Mr. Wagner said. “A small group of people should not be allowed to dominate government just because the Census Bureau counted a large prison there.”

Read the full article, Census Bureau’s Counting of Prisoners Benefits Some Rural Voting Districts on the New York Times site.

You can also read previous blog posts and reports about some of the other places discussed in the Times:

• St. Lawrence County, NY is discussed in our report Phantom constituents in the Empire State: How outdated Census Bureau methodology burdens New York counties
• Chippewa County, WI
• 21 Counties that have at least 21% of their populations behind bars
• Lake County, TN is discussed in our report
  Phantom Constituents in Tennessee’s Boards of County Commissioners

If you live in a small community with a large prison, be sure to check out our Democracy Toolkit to determine if — and to what degree — prison populations are distorting your access to local government.

And finally, this map was made by our friend Adell Donaghue to illustrate the current — and soon to be abolished — unequal districts in Anamosa, Iowa: