Delaware Passes Law to Count Incarcerated Persons at their Home Addresses for Redistricting

Becomes Second State To Adopt Reform Ensuring Fairness and Accuracy of Redistricting

July 7, 2010

Becomes Second State To Adopt Reform Ensuring Fairness and Accuracy of Redistricting

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Peter Wagner, PPI, (413) 527-0845
Tim Rusch, Demos, 212 389-1407
Brenda Wright, Demos, 617 232 5885 ext. 13

On June 30, the Delaware Senate passed a bill ensuring that incarcerated persons will be counted as residents of their home addresses when new state and local legislative districts are drawn in Delaware. The bill previously passed in the House, and is now awaiting Governor Jack Markell’s signature.

The U.S. Census currently counts incarcerated people as residents of the prison location. When states use Census counts to draw legislative districts, they unintentionally enhance the weight of a vote cast in districts that contain prisons at the expense of all other districts in the state. Delaware is the second state to correct this problem and adjust Census data to count incarcerated persons at their home address, joining Maryland which enacted a bill in April. Similar legislation is pending in New York.

“Delaware’s legislation recognizes that prison-based gerrymandering is a problem of fairness in redistricting. All districts — some far more than others — send people to prison, but only some districts have large prisons. Counting incarcerated people as residents of the prison distorts the principle of one person, one vote, and we applaud the Delaware General Assembly for enacting this common-sense solution,” said Peter Wagner, Executive Director of the Prison Policy Initiative.

Not everything is bigger in Texas: How rural Texas counties with large prisons maintain fairness in democracy

County officials do not have the luxury of crafting specious arguments in favor of prison-based gerrymandering. They have to do the right thing.

by Elena Lavarreda, June 2, 2010

Often, the biggest proponents of maintaining prison-based gerrymandering are state legislative officials with prisons in their districts. The extra population, which can’t vote, leaves fewer real constituents to be responsible to. Many times, the advantage brought by prison-based gerrymandering at the state legislative level is large enough to fight for, but not so big that one looks unreasonable to fight for it. These officials have the luxury of crafting specious arguments in defense of prison-based gerrymandering because the impact is comparatively small.

County officials, however, do not have the same luxury. Their county board districts tend to be smaller, so a single large prison could be the majority of the district. Granting some people who live near a prison more than twice the influence than others over their government simply doesn’t make sense. That’s why every county but one which has had to grapple with prison-based gerrymandering has rejected the practice, and excluded the prisoners when drawing their districts.

That said, prison-based gerrymandering still exists in many rural communities as an accident, where nobody noticed the prison was distorting democracy. For that reason, the Prison Policy Initiative has been researching how county board districts are drawn in communities that host prisons across the country.

One of the clearest examples of the import of prison-based gerrymandering is in Texas. The state has one of the highest incarceration rates in the country, and its prisons are far from the urban centers that most people in prison call home. Many of the prisons are so large, and the population in some of the rural counties so small, that the impact on state legislative districting is larger than in most other states.

But it is also in rural Texas where a consensus has developed that it doesn’t make sense to draw districts based on prison populations. In earlier research, Peter Wagner found 7 rural Texas counties who ignored the prison population when drawing their county districts.

In my work, I found an additional 7 counties that excluded the prison population when they drew their Commissioner districts. More research is ongoing, but we have yet to find a rural Texas county that has considered the question and thought it was a good idea to give some people more representation just because those people live next to a large prison.

I researched the following County Commissioner districts and saw that each ignored the prison populations when drawing their Commissioner districts, and why this solution was necessary:

• Childress County—One district in the eastern part of the county would have been 70% prisoners, giving some residents almost three times as much influence as residents elsewhere.
• Walker County—Three of the four districts contain large prisons, and one district would have been about half prisoners, giving some residents twice the influence of others.
• Anderson—A district in the western part of the county would have been entirely prisoners, with no voters.
• Karnes—A district in the south would have been 73% prisoners.
• Pecos—One district in the west would have been 32% prisoners.
• Mitchell—A district in the northwest would have been entirely prisoners.
• Coryell—A district in the central part of the county would have been 47% prisoners.

These 7 counties, like the 7 counties Peter discovered in April, all reject the Census Bureau’s prison counts and draw fair districts based on the actual population of their counties.

Prisons are an important phenomenon in Texas. In his new book, Texas Tough, Robert Perkinson shows that Texas leads the nation by most measures of criminal justice severity — total prison population, total supermax cells, and total executions.

But when it comes to the harm to democracy caused by prison-based gerrymandering, these rural Texas counties have shown that not everything is bigger in Texas.

With state legislative redistricting right around the corner, I hope that state leaders will follow the ethical example set by their county-level counterparts.

“Maryland Bill” — Podcast Episode #2

Peter Wagner speaks with Cindy Boersma of the ACLU about Maryland's new law to count incarcerated people at their home addresses for redistricting purposes.

by Peter Wagner, May 27, 2010

Play (13:02, 6.6MB)

Host: Peter Wagner, Executive Director, Prison Policy Initiative

Guest: Cindy Boersma, Legislative Director of the ACLU of Maryland
May, 2010

Transcript:

Peter Wagner:

Welcome to issues in prison-based gerrymandering, a podcast about keeping the Census Bureau’s prison count from harming our democracy. The Census Bureau counts people in prison as if they were actual residents of their prison cells, even though most state laws say that people in prison are residents of their homes. When prison counts are used to pad legislative districts, the weight of a vote starts to differ. If you live next to a large prison, your vote is worth more than one cast in a district without prisons. Prison-based gerrymandering distorts state legislative districts and has been known to create county legislative districts that contain more prisoners than voters. On each episode, we’ll talk with different voting rights experts about ways in which state and local governments can change the census and avoid prison-based gerrymandering.

Continue reading →

“Address Unknown” — Podcast Episode #1

Justin Levitt of the Brennan Center and Peter Wagner discuss model legislation to end prison-based gerrymandering.

by Peter Wagner, May 20, 2010

Play (20:37, 10.8MB)

Host: Peter Wagner, Executive Director, Prison Policy Initiative

Guest: Justin Levitt, Counsel, Brennan Center for Justice
May, 2010

Transcript:

Peter Wagner:

Welcome to Issues in Prison-Based Gerrymandering: a podcast about keeping the Census Bureau’s prison count from harming our democracy.

Continue reading →

8 things our opponents should know about prison-based gerrymandering in New York State

Many of the elected officials who oppose Census reform should be supporting it.

by Peter Wagner, May 18, 2010

To my frustration, prison-based gerrymandering is sometimes portrayed as an upstate vs. downstate, urban vs. rural, Republican vs. Democratic issue. Some of the enthusiasm for reform is unfortunately partisan, but this need not be a partisan issue. Here are 8 reasons why our opponents should be supporting ending prison-based gerrymandering, no matter if they are Republican or Democratic, urban or rural, from upstate or downstate. –Peter Wagner

1. No federal or state funding program will be affected by revising the redistricting data.
2. The New York State Constitution says that a prison cell is not a residence: “no person shall be deemed to have gained or lost a residence, by reason of his or her presence or absence … while confined in any public prison.” Art II, § 4. When they take office, legislators swear an oath to uphold the Constitution of the State of New York. Art XIII, § 1.
3. The overwhelming majority of NY counties with large prisons already reject the prison counts for internal redistricting. In these districts, every time the public learns that prison populations are being used to distort districts, they insist on reform. The one time a county legislature — St. Lawrence County — ignored the public outcry and gerrymandered districts around prisons, the county majority lost the next election. Further, two additional jurisdictions that included the prison populations in local districts, Oneida County and the City of Rome, are expected to remove the prison populations prior to districting even if the Schneiderman/Jeffries bill does not pass. A total 13 New York counties currently reject the Census Bureau prison count and draw fair districts. The trend is clear: upstate counties do not think that incarcerated people are residents of their counties.
4. Upstate papers, including the Times Herald-Record (Middletown NY), Post-Standard (Syracuse, NY) and Observer-Dispatch (Utica, NY) have all called for an end to prison-based gerrymandering. The Observer-Dispatch said that “figuring those prisoners into the mix when voter representation is determined is absurd” and the Times Herald-Record said that “a politician should be embarrassed to claim that people held in prisons should count as constituents.”
5. Changing where incarcerated people are counted will not mean eliminating your district and transferring it to New York City. New York Senate districts each contain more than 306,000 people each. The total prison population is far smaller than a single district, and both the total prison population and the portion that is from New York City has shrunk over the last decade. Ten years ago, the state had 71,466 people in prison with 66% from New York City. Today, the prison population is down to 58,000 with only 50% being from the city.
6. The issue of prison closures should not be confused with the issue of where incarcerated people should be counted. The Governor wants to close a number of upstate prisons in the next few years, but this issue is entirely separate from the Census. The question of whether the state needs those facilities and what kind of alternative investments the state should be making upstate are entirely unrelated to the question of where incarcerated people are counted.
7. Some Republicans have justified continuing prison-based gerrymandering because they don’t trust the new Democratic majority to treat them fairly during redistricting. Claiming incarcerated people as constituents to get an extra 1% population is not worth ceding the ability to criticize the other sides’ dirty tricks at redistricting time. If the minority party wants to ensure it is treated fairly, it should seek the moral high ground.
8. Using prison populations to pad districts has large effect on New York’s districts, but the numbers were even more dramatic in Maryland. Yet, their “No Representation Without Population Act” passed with bi-partisan support from urban and rural areas. Both lead sponsors (who were Democrats) and some of the rural Republican Senators who voted for the bill had large prisons in their districts. Self-interest and partisan bickering did not come in to play. Annapolis Maryland’s The Capital asked Delegate Joseline Pena-Melnyk why she sponsored the bill despite the large prisons in her district: “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “To me, it is just a fair way to count.”

If you like this article, it is also available in fact sheet form.

An Illinois prison census bill would bring fairness to redistricting

The city of Danville, Illinois already rejects the idea of using prison populations to draw city districts. Its state and its county should follow suit.

by Peter Wagner, May 17, 2010

The Danville, Illinois Commercial-News is reporting that Loss of prisoners would hurt city. I sent the below letter to the editor which explains that the bill in question would not apply to funding, and I report for the first time that Danville is among the rural Illinois cities that already reject the Census Bureau’s prison count for their own internal redistricting.–Peter Wagner

Your article Loss of prisoners would hurt city [May 15, 2010] says that the Prisoner Census Adjustment Act [HB4650] would cost Danville funds. The bill, which died this session but I hope will be reintroduced in a different form, does not apply to funding.

It merely changes the redistricting data so that state and local governments can draw fair districts based on the actual legal residence of the population. The bill would bring fairness and consistency to redistricting.

The City of Danville already rejected the Census Bureau’s prison count when drawing its local districts after the last Census. The city was right that drawing a district that was 40% prisoners would be unfair to residents in other parts of the city.

Danville is not alone in rejecting the Census Bureau’s prison count. Ten Illinois counties and 4 other Illinois cities do the same.

But both the state legislative districts and the Vermilion County Board are based on prison populations. Using prisoners to pad one Vermilion County Board district dilutes the votes of the residents of the other districts by about 20%.

A state bill to create one consistent dataset for use in redistricting is the best way to go. Everyone should have the same access to government regardless of whether she lives next to a large prison.

Peter Wagner
Executive Director
Prison Policy Initiative
The writer is co-author of Importing Constituents: Prisoners and Political Clout in Illinois, a district-by-district and county-by-county analysis of how the Census Bureau’s prison counts distort democracy.

Shanking the Count?

Could a simple misunderstanding, and not self-interest, be at the root of Delegate Shank's opposition to No Representation Without Population law?

by Peter Wagner, May 12, 2010

The only opponent to Maryland’s new “No Representation Without Population” law that will count prisoners for redistricting purposes as residents of their home, not prison, addresses, is Delegate Christopher Shank. Eighteen percent of his current district’s population is incarcerated. This is the largest example of prison-based gerrymandering in a state legislative district yet identified.

But I wonder if a simple misunderstanding, and not self-interest, could be at the root of Delegate Shank’s opposition to the new law. Two weeks ago, Annapolis’s The Capital described Delegate Shank’s opposition:

House Minority Whip Christopher Shank, R-Washington, said inmates in western Maryland often have sentences stretching into decades…. “(Inmates) are in there for a long time.”

Delegate Shank may be confusing the prison buildings and his constituents who work there, with the prisoners. The prison buildings that he drives past will be there for a long time, but the people inside will not. I can’t find the equivalent figure for Maryland, but the typical state prisoner will be home in 34 months.(source)

Incarcerated people are just passing through Delegate Shank’s district, they are not a part of the communities that he represents, so they should not be credited to those communities at districting time.

NAACP branch passes resolution to end prison-based gerrymandering

NAACP branch says that redistricting committees should refuse to use prison counts to pad legislative districts.

by Peter Wagner, May 7, 2010

The NAACP has, at its last two annual conventions, passed resolutions calling for the Census Bureau to count incarcerated people as residents of their home addresses and for the association to lobby for change. Last year’s successful resolution was written by Branch #4003, incarcerated at the Crossroads Correctional Center in Missouri, and adopted by the general membership.

The branch has written a new resolution for 2010 (below) which was approved by the branch membership in late March. The resolution must be approved by the Missouri state conference before it can be considered by national officials this summer.–Peter

Resolution: End Prison-Based Gerrymandering

NAACP Branch #4003, Cameron, Missouri

WHEREAS, the U.S. Census Bureau counts people in prison as residents of the community that contains the prison, not the community that they are legal residents of and to which they will return;[1] and

WHEREAS, census data is the basis for legislative districts, counting incarcerated people as residents of the prison community enhances the weight of a vote cast in a district with a prison while diluting the weight of votes in all other districts;[2] and

What could be worse than suppressing someone’s right to vote?

Stealing their right to vote and attributing it to someone else, writes Daniel Loeb in The Philadelphia Jewish Voice.

by Elena Lavarreda, May 3, 2010

Dr. Daniel E. Loeb recently wrote a compelling piece for The Philadelphia Jewish Voice entitled, Political Prisoners in the United State? Depoliticizing our Criminal System?

Loeb grapples with the concept of “political prisoner” and asks, “Does the United States actually have political prisoners?”

There might be many reasons why the answer to the question is a firm “yes!”, but in Dr. Loeb’s piece he discusses two ways in which, “…millions of American citizens in the criminal justice system … are pawns in our political system”; first, through “voter suppression”, and second, through the “enumeration of prisoners”.

After a discussion of voter suppression, he asks the reader:

What could be worse that suppressing someone’s right to vote?

He cleverly answers:

Stealing their right to vote and attributing it to someone else.

Otherwise known as–prison-based gerrymandering! Loeb clearly demonstrates the negative state and local level impact that counting prisoners as residents of their prison cell has on American democracy, but he finds room for optimism. He applauds the Census Bureau for their early release of the group quarter counts:

Fortunately, the census bureau has become more attentive to the situation. Census Director Robert Groves has agreed to identify which census blocks contain group quarters such as correctional facilities early enough so that state and local redistricting bodies can choose to use this data to draw fair districts.

The Census and Democracy: Maryland Fixes a Major Error

Eric Lotke wrote an outstanding piece today highlighting our recent victory in Maryland and putting it in context of the national effort.

by Elena Lavarreda, April 14, 2010

Eric Lotke wrote an outstanding piece today highlighting our recent victory in Maryland, while managing to locate the issue in the ongoing national struggle to fix the Census miscount. His article was featured on the DailyKos, Huffington Post, Campaign for America’s Future and other outlets.

Lotke’s clear demonstration of the long lasting and damaging effect of prison-based gerrymandering on democracy is profound. When discussing discussing the racial and ethnic impact of the Census miscount, he states:

“These numbers are too high for all kinds of reasons — but the impact on redistricting carves it into the bones of our democracy.”

Despite our victory in Maryland, Lotke is right to point out where the Census has faltered and what states can do to make sure they draw fair and equal districts:

Still, the Census Bureau has stubbornly refused to change its rules and count people in prison in the location that they come from and return to. It has conceded for the 2010 census to release its micro data early enough that states and counties who choose to can reassess prison jurisdictions in time for reapportionment. But Maryland sets a new standard by taking matters into its own hands. Technical matters of implementation will need to be worked out (they have ten years!) but the law states a clear legislative intent. Constituents are not exportable commodities.