State officials tell counties to exclude prison populations from county level redistricting

by Peter Wagner, November 1, 2004

Previous articles have discussed individual counties in California and New York that have decided after public outcry to exclude incarcerated non-resident populations from their populations for purposes of local redistricting. This article looks at how 5 state legislatures and attorneys general have responded to the severe problem caused by the combination of an outdated Census Bureau “usual residence rule” and a rapidly growing population of prisoners incarcerated far from their homes. In four of these states, the state officials either required or encouraged the removal of prison populations.

Students and prisoners: Census should not count them the same

by Peter Wagner, October 25, 2004

The Census Bureau currently counts college students and prisoners the same way: as residents of the town in which they sleep. This makes sense for students, because they are a part of the surrounding college community, but prisoners have no such ties. The below table from my Actual Constituents: Students and Political Clout in New York report compares how students interact with the surrounding community with how prisoners do not.

Notes: Actual Constituents: Students and Political Clout in New York explains how state legislative districts are drawn, why they are drawn to contain equal numbers of people, why it makes good sense to include students at their college addresses as a part of legislative districts, and why students should be welcomed at the polls. For more contrasts between students and prisoners, see also the analysis in the Brennan Center’s report: One Size Does Not Fit All: Why the Census Bureau Should Change the Way It Counts Prisoners [PDF]

Call your cell a residence?: Do not pass “GO”, go directly to ….

by Peter Wagner, June 28, 2004

In 1894, Michael Cady tried to register to vote using his address at the Tombs Jail in New York City. Jail inmates are allowed to vote, but he was convicted for illegal registration because the NY Constitution says that

“no person shall be deemed to have gained or lost a residence, by reason of his presence or absence … while confined in any public prison.”

The prosecution’s theory was that while Cady was allowed to vote, he could not vote in the prison district. Even though Cady was planning on staying at the Tombs forever, Cady must have — the prosecution argued — lived somewhere else before.

The highest court in New York agreed:

“The Tombs is not a place of residence. It is not constructed or maintained for that purpose. It is a place of confinement for all except the keeper and his family, and a person cannot under the guise of a commitment … go there as a prisoner, having a right to be there only as a prisoner, and gain a residence there.”

When counting the population of each state, the federal Census counts the nation’s mostly urban prisoners as if they were residents of the rural towns with the prisons. When the Census first started in 1790 with the purpose of dividing Congressional seats among the states, that probably made sense. But today one of the biggest users of Census data is state legislatures that must redraw their legislative districts each decade to comply with the Supreme Court’s “One Person One Vote” rule of equally sized districts. Relying on the Census Bureau to count the population sounds convenient and fair, but until the Census Bureau changes how it counts prisoners, using the federal Census data might not be the best way to insure that districts comply with the requirements of the 14th Amendment and how many state constitutions define residence.

If calling your jail cell your residence gets you sent to prison, shouldn’t it also be illegal for rural legislators to call prisoners their “constituents”?

Read more about Michael Cady in Importing Constituents: Prisoner and Political Clout in New York.

Prison town legislators represent prisoners’ interests? Not quite.

by Peter Wagner, June 14, 2004

On June 7, talks between the New York State Senate and the Assembly on how to best reform the draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws broke down. Publicly, the dispute is over ideological disagreements, but an obscure Census quirk that counts prisoners as residents of the prison’s legislative district may be responsible for distorting how the debate is framed.

The Assembly wanted to reduce a broad range of drug sentences while the Senate wanted to focus only on the most extreme sentences. Previous columns (May 24, 2004 and December 1, 2003) have profiled the district of the Senator’s lead negotiator, Dale Volker. This column examines the district of another member of the Senate’s delegation to the conference committee, Crime Committee Chair Senator Michael Nozzolio.

The 54th District Seneca Falls Republican explained the Senate’s perspective at the start of the meetings: “Our focus is on the victim, not the drug dealer.” The Assembly members took the opposite approach, arguing that drug crimes are victimless crimes and should have sentences shorter than those imposed for violent acts.

An analysis of Senator Nozzolio’s district suggests that his opposition to a thorough repeal of the Rockefeller Drug Laws may not lie just in ideology but in an obscure Census quirk that counts prisoners as if they were residents of the prison town. Because 65.5% of New York State’s prisoners are from New York City, but only a few small prisons exist within the city, 43,740 city residents are counted as upstate residents. This swells the political power of upstate legislators and their real constituents while diluting the clout of New York City’s residents.

Local officials tell prisoners: “You don’t live here”

by Peter Wagner, June 7, 2004

Many prison town officials are quick to claim prisoners as residents when the Census Bureau comes to town, but prisoners report that this is the only time these officials are so welcoming.

The Census Bureau counts the nation’s mostly urban prisoners as if they were residents of the prison town. When the Census’ only purpose was to count the total population of each state for purposes of apportioning Congress, this procedure might have made sense. Today, when this data is used for state legislative redistricting, the method is an outdated relic that distorts the size of communities within the same state. Last week’s column discussed the theoretical rationale for defining residence based on the place you willingly choose to be and argued that since prisoners are moved to prison against their will, their residence is unchanged. In prior columns, I’ve written that most states have constitutional clauses and statutes that define residence for electoral purposes as to exclude prisons. This column explores how communities with prisons conceive of prisoner residence.

In the cases where the Census Bureau erred and placed the prison in the wrong rural town, the town with the prison frequently complained. But outside of the Census, do local officials consider prisoners to be residents of the town? Are there local services that are available only to residents that prisoners are denied on the basis that the prisoners are not residents?

To find out, I placed classified ads in publications that prisoners read and was flooded with responses. Many prisoners were intrigued, but stumped. This letter was typical:

“Albion State Penitentiary [where I am incarcerated] is so far out in the woods, in the extreme northwest corner of Pennsylvania, it is known as Far B Yon. … I’d be pleased to help … but I have no idea what organizations or types of services to request assistance for.”

By virtue of their incarceration, prisoners are not able to visit the local parks or discuss the affairs of the day in the town square, but my correspondents did identify two local services applicable only to residents but denied to them: the local library and the court system.

Home is where the cell is? Only to the Census Bureau

by Peter Wagner, May 31, 2004

In the words of U.S. Department of Agriculture demographer Calvin Beale: “A rural prison is a classic ‘export’ industry, providing a service for the outside community.” Although rural counties contain only 20% of the national population, they have snapped up 60% of new prison construction. Like export processing zones in Third World countries, even the raw material is imported for final manufacture. In New York, for example, only 24% of prisoners are from the upstate region, but 91% of prisoners are incarcerated there.

The Census Bureau counts the nation’s mostly urban prisoners as if they were residents of the mostly rural towns that host the prisons. This methodology infects the data used for legislative redistricting and results in a dilution of the voting strength of the communities that have large numbers of people in prison. States with large prison populations violate the 14th Amendment’s One Person One Vote principle when they rely on Census Bureau data to draw their legislative districts.

Why are so many Native Hawaiians incarcerated in Minnesota?

by Peter Wagner, May 10, 2004

The Bureau of Justice Statistics provides incarceration rate data for Latinos, non-Latino Whites, and non-Latino Blacks, but it does not provide this data for other groups. For another Prison Policy Initiative project, we tried to use the Census 2000 data to fill in this gap for every state in the country, but the results were not what we expected, and one finding was so shocking that we had to investigate further.

According to Census 2000 data, Minnesota appears to incarcerate Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders at a rate 45.8 times higher than it incarcerates White people. By Bureau of Justice Statistics figures, Minnesota has the 4th highest racial disparity between Black and White incarceration rates, incarcerating Blacks at a rate almost 13 times as frequently as Whites.

Why would Native Hawaiians in Minnesota be treated so harshly? Could it even be true that the Minnesota has incarcerated 1 out of every 10 Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders in the state?

Outdated methodology impairs Census Bureau’s count of Black population

by Peter Wagner, May 3, 2004

Census 2000 showed a number of rural counties in the West, Midwest and Northeast that more than doubled their Black populations over the previous decade. Is this some sort of reversal of the great migration that saw millions of Blacks leave the rural South for Northern cities? Is a new economic opportunity drawing Blacks to leave cities for rural places? Not quite.

Most of the counties shown by the Census Bureau to have the fastest growing Black populations (see counties marked in purple in the first map below), are counties with new prisons with large incarcerated Black populations. (Compare with second map below.)

The Census Bureau counts incarcerated people as if they were residents of the prison town, even though prisoners have no contact with the outside community and are not there by choice. This methodology has staggering implications for how and where Black citizens are counted. On Census Day, 2.5% of Black Americans found themselves behind bars. Twelve percent of Black men in their 20s or early 30s are incarcerated. These figures are 7 to 8 times higher than the corresponding statistics for Whites. The Census Bureau’s method of counting the incarcerated disproportionately counts Blacks in the wrong place.

Prison expansion made 56 counties with declining populations appear to be growing in Census 2000

by Peter Wagner, April 26, 2004

Counting incarcerated people as if they were residents of the prison town leads to misleading portrayals of which counties are growing and which are declining. Declining populations in a county are often a sign of economic distress. Census 2000 reported that 78% of counties experienced population growth during the 1990s. Yet 56 of these counties can attribute their growth only to prison expansion and not to children being born or new residents choosing to move to the county. Said another way, for each 50 counties labeled by the Census as growing during the 1990s, one of those counties actually saw a decline in their actual free population. (See map and table.)

Twenty one counties have twenty one percent of their population in prisons and jails

by Peter Wagner, April 19, 2004

Counting large external populations of prisoners as local residents leads to misleading conclusions about the size and growth of communities. Many of the prison hosting counties have relatively small actual populations, but large prison populations. Twenty one counties in the United States have at least 21% of their population in prison. (See map and table.) In Crowley County, Colorado and West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, one-third of the population consists of prisoners imported from somewhere else.