Politicians Unify Prisoners’ Power – For Themselves!

Bruce Reilly guest blogs about prison-based gerrymandering in Rhode Island.

by Bruce Reilly, March 29, 2011

For those of you in my home state, Prison-Based Gerrymandering might be well known, along with my comrades in New York, Delaware, or Maryland.  For the rest, please take this small state example and reach out for us to help you tackle your own location.

Over a year has passed since the first attempts to educate RI policy makers on the issue of Prison-Based Gerrymandering.  The 2010 Census data shows that the imprisoned “residents” of Cranston have grown by 6%.  Considering overall RI population growth is the lowest in America (0.4%), 26 times lower than the national average, it is time to count prisoners in their communities or continue the path of seriously imbalanced power.

A hearing was held in the Senate Judiciary on a bill that would count prisoners in their communities rather than cellblocks.  Peter Wagner, from Prison Policy Initiative, has been a technical resource on this issue around the country, including successful legislative changes in New York, Delaware, and Maryland last year.  He noted that RI Dept. of Corrections has excellent data, and the U.S. Census Bureau officially adjusted their statistics this year so that the prisons can be more easily identified.

See the RI population numbers by prison, in Google Maps.

John Marion of Common Cause noted how every district loses by ceding power to those that contain the prisoners.  It is not about finances, but about the number of people one needs to represent.  He also pointed out that, under RI law, people do not lose their residence based on many things including going away to college, military service, or prison.  When Senator Hodgson inquired about the possibility of voters awaiting trial losing their residence by this, Steve Brown (ACLU) pointed out that someone awaiting trial would not be able to register as a resident of Cranston unless they were actually from there.  The Absentee Ballot would correspond with their “home address.”  Likewise, prisoners are not allowed to register their children in Cranston schools nor benefit from being a Cranston resident in any tangible way.

Tish DiPrete spoke on behalf of the Urban League about the overall lack of representation in urban areas, as they are traditionally undercounted already.  People move around quite often, and any city politician should know that many of their registered voters (who will indeed vote) have moved across town.  Considering the overall population numbers are reduced, and growth is low, urban representation needs to be repatriated.

A perfect example is how 27% of northern Smith Hill is vacant properties, the district will have to expand in order to have the adequate number of residents.  The ProJo recently published the populations of each current district, and whether they have too few, or too many, residents.  As the article points out, expanding territory into new towns creates a whole other set of commitments and demands.

Current House District 15 has 1,081 extra people, while also having 1,736 incarcerated non-voters padding the district.

Current House District 16 has 374 extra people, while also having 1,821 incarcerated non-voters padding the district.  This is currently Rep. Peter Palumbo’s district which clearly has the fewest vote-eligible people in Rhode Island.  Because of our consolidated prisons, RI ends up with one of the most affected districts in the nation due to prison-based gerrymandering.

In 1970, the ACI population represented 4% of a House district.  That number climbed to 6% in 1980, then 19% in 1990.  In 2000 the number rose to 23%, and now it is at 25%.

Consider the Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls House District 56.  It has 360 incarcerated “residents” (2010 Census), up from 324 in year 2000.  Yet anyone who has been following the Wyatt saga (if not, search “Wyatt” on this site) knows this population has been over 700 during the past decade, and possibly only the death of a detainee has halved the number.  Incidentally, CF District 56 is up 984 people.  Shedding the Wyatt would make its expansion a matter of blocks, rather than neighborhoods.

What of the Senate implications, you ask?  They are half as blatant, considering there are half as many districts.  Currently, all 3557 Cranston prisoners are counted as residents of Senate District 27.  This reduces every other Senate district in RI only 87% as powerful as the padded district.  D 27 is currently over by 444 residents, and would be ceding some ground… but it should be ceding 4000 people, and the neighborhoods they hail from.

And finally, there is Cranston City Ward 6, which is nearly 25% prisoners.  This means that for every three people in line to speak with the Ward 6 Councilor, there are four in line to see the others.  Each one with a demand.

For a conversation on the situation in RI, listen to this podcast between myself and Peter Wagner.

Its not a Democrat/Republican thing, its a “One Man, One Vote” thing.  And if you’re not into that, it says a bit about your feelings on the U.S. Constitution and the canon of law.

Prison-based gerrymandering threatens more Wisconsin governments

Cities in Wisconsin face drawing districts with no actual residents, just prison population. More Wis. fact sheets available.

by Aleks Kajstura, March 29, 2011

More potential for prison-based gerrymandering problems was found in local governments across Wisconsin; fact sheets are now available for Crawford County and the cities of Appleton, Kenosha, New Lisbon, Prairie du Chien, Portage, Racine, Stanley and Waukesha.

The cities of Stanley and New Lisbon are both facing the prospect of having an Aldermanic ward with no actual residents. This problem is created because the population of the prisons located in the cities is larger than any one of their wards. Our Wisconsin campaign page has more background on prison-based gerrymandering issues in Wisconsin and a complete list of fact sheets available for the state.

Maryland Redistricting Population Count Released

Maryland releases adjusted redistricting data that counts incarcerated people at home.

by Peter Wagner, March 22, 2011

The Maryland Department of Planning issued this press release:

Maryland Redistricting Population Count Released
Adjusted in accordance with “No Representation Without Population Act” of 2010

BALTIMORE – The Secretaries of the Maryland Department of Planning (MDP) and the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services (DPSCS) and the executive director of the Department of Legislative Services (DLS) today certified adjusted Census figures for the purposes of redistricting in accordance with the Maryland “No Representation Without Population Act” of 2010.

The Act, approved by the General Assembly and signed by the Governor last year, requires that prisoners in state or federal prisons are counted for Congressional, State Legislative and local redistricting purposes based on their last known address before incarceration. Information on some 22,000 prisoners was reviewed in the process of implementing the Act. Maryland, like all states, redistricts every 10 years after the decennial census is completed. The U.S. Census Bureau on Feb. 9, 2011 delivered the data to Maryland from the national Census conducted in spring 2010.

Read the rest of the press release from the state, and check out our Maryland campaign page for some of the research, advocacy, and editorial support that led to passage of the first-in-the-nation “No Representation Without Population” Act.

Update: Thanks to Keesha Gaskins at the Brennan Center for Justice for sending along this article:

Feds foil Md. redistricting plan to count inmates by former home

by Steve Kilar, Capital News Service

WASHINGTON — A federal roadblock has stopped Maryland short of counting all prison inmates at their pre-incarceration addresses in order to draw political boundaries.

An appeal for the addresses has been made to the U.S. Department of Justice, said Andrew Ratner, a representative for the Maryland Department of Planning. But because the Baltimore City charter requires approval of a redistricting map by April 1, the department decided to release revised population figures now.

“We couldn’t wait any longer,” Ratner said. “We felt we had to move forward.”

But the new numbers are not adjusted to reflect residents of Maryland’s federal penitentiary in Cumberland — as required by a 2010 Maryland law — because the Federal Bureau of Prisons denied the state’s request for prior residence information.

The headline’s “foil” is a stronger verb than I would have used, but the story is a good introduction to the unnecessary problem created by the Bureau of Prisons, to the innovative solution employed in Maryland, and to the importance of ending prison-based gerrymandering. Read the article Feds foil Md. redistricting plan to count inmates by former home

Upstate New York Legislators Propose Return to Prison-Based Gerrymandering

Do two Reps. think it makes sense to claim thousands of disenfranchised Black and Latino urban men as "constituents" of their white rural districts?

by Peter Wagner, March 19, 2011

Andrew Adams has a piece on OpEdNews questioning why two upstate members of the state Assembly are calling for a repeal of the law ending prison-based gerrymandering. Do these Assemblymembers really think it makes sense to claim thousands of disenfranchised African-American and Latino urban men as their “constituents” of their mostly white rural districts?

The article: Rural New York Legislators Propose Resurrecting Jim Crow

Wisconsin fact sheets updated for coming redistricting

New fact sheets about prison-based gerrymandering in Wisconsin's upcoming redistricting efforts.

by Aleks Kajstura, March 16, 2011

Wisconsin has some new prison-based gerrymandering problems to contend with in its upcoming redistricting effort. We updated our fact sheets on Wisconsin to highlight current and upcoming potential problems.

A new prison can create potential problems that a county may not yet be aware of. For example, the Census Bureau just counted 1025 people incarcerated at the New Lisbon Correctional Institution as residents of New Lisbon in Juneau County. The county is about to redraw its 21 County Board of Supervisors districts, so that each district contains about 1,270 people.

Unless the Juneau County Board decides to reject the Census Bureau’s prison count, the district that includes the New Lisbon Correctional Institution would be 80% prisoners. Every resident near the prison would be given as much say over the future of the county as 5 residents in every other district. Giving a small group of people 5 times as much political power as other residents because they happen to have a prison nearby isn’t just unfair; it violates state and federal law.

This redistricting cycle also provides a great opportunity for counties with existing prison-based district distortions to ensure exclude prison populations and ensure that for the coming decade, everyone has an equal say in county government, whether they live next to a prison or not.

Census reform bill passes Illinois House Committee

HB94 sponsored by Rep. Lashawn Ford, has passed out of committee and is before the full Illinois House.

by Peter Wagner, March 15, 2011

Illinois’ HB94, Prisoner Census Addresses, sponsored by Rep. Lashawn Ford, has passed out of committee. The bill would, starting with the next census, count incarcerated people at home. It is now before the full house. Read Rep. Ford’s press release.

NJ Commission asked to address prison-based gerrymandering

Alexander Shalom, policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, blogs on NJ.com.

by Peter Wagner, March 13, 2011

Alexander Shalom, policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, blogs on NJ.com:

As New Jersey’s legislative redistricting commission meets, it will have to confront this question: How should we count the roughly 22,000 people serving sentences in New Jersey’s state prisons? For years, New Jersey has counted inmates as residents of the municipalities where prisons are located, rather than at their home addresses.

Read his post and check out the New Jersey campaign against prison-based gerrymandering page.

Conversation on historic election in Somerset County Maryland

The first African-American elected official in Somerset County Maryland explains how prison-based gerrymandering delayed electoral progress in his county.

by Peter Wagner, February 24, 2011

Last week Maryland’s WYPR Midday program with Dan Rodricks hosted a fascinating 49 minute-long discussion about Somerset County Maryland:

Craig Mathies is the first African-American ever elected to help run Somerset County, despite its one-third African-American population. A newly elected County Commissioner, Mathies joins Dan in Studio A to talk about his historic election and the challenges that lie ahead. Also joining us two other key players in the drama: Kirkland Hall, president of the Somerset County NAACP, and Deborah Jeon, legal director of the Maryland Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union

Somerset County was a central part of the campaign against prison-based gerrymandering in Maryland because, as we explained in a fact sheet:

40% of the county is African-American, but an African-American has never been elected to county office. The county settled a Voting Rights Act lawsuit in the mid-1980s and agreed to draw a majority African-American district. Unfortunately, a new large prison in the remedial district resulted in the African-American resident population being split among multiple districts. An effective African-American district could be drawn if the prison population had not been included in the Somerset population count.

On the program, Craig Mathies, Kirkland Hall and Deborah Jeon explain the history of race relations and electoral fairness in the county and discuss their campaign for change.

You can listen online or download the audio.

Solutions pages updated

All the ways to end prison-based gerrymandering are spread across a handful of clicks.

by Peter Wagner, December 20, 2010

We’ve updated and reorganized our pages about the solutions to prison-based gerrymandering, including the legislation page with model, passed and proposed state and county legislation, and a technical memo about Using the Census Bureau’s Advanced Group Quarters Table.

New York Senate explains prison-based gerrymandering

The New York State Senate explains the state's prison-based gerrymandering problems, and highlights changes for the upcoming redistricting cycle.

by Aleks Kajstura, December 14, 2010

The New York State Senate explains the problems with prison-based gerrymandering in New York State, and what the State is doing about it this redistricting cycle.

Currently, the United States Bureau of the Census includes everyone housed in federal, state, and local correctional facilities in its count of the general population in the Census “block” (population unit) containing the prison facility. The state’s current reliance on the Census Bureau’s prison count data when drawing legislative districts could violate federal law in two ways: it dilutes minority voting strength in possible violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965; and it violates the one person, one vote principle of the 14th Amendment’s Equal protection Clause, which requires voting districts to have equal numbers of residents.

New York State’s reliance on the Census Bureau’s data for prison population also violates the New York State law in two ways: it runs afoul of the New York State Constitution, which states in Article 2, section 4 that, for the purpose of voting, “no person shall he deemed to have gained or lost a residence…while confined in any public prison;”

Similarly, subdivision 1 of section 5-104 of the New York Election Law directs that “[F] or the purpose of registering and voting “no person shall be deemed to have gained or lost a residence…while confined in any public prison.”

Crediting the population of prisoners to the Census block where they are temporarily and involuntarily held creates electoral inequities at all levels of government. These electoral inequities are apparent in New York, where out of a prison population of approximately 60,000, over 75% of people in prison are people of color and over 70% are from urban communities. Urban communities including Albany, Buffalo, New York City, Rochester, and Syracuse are being shortchanged for purposes of redistricting in favor of rural communities, leading to vote dilution for urban communities of color across the state. This significant vote inflation in rural communities is compounded at the local levels, as most counties, cities, and towns use federal census data to draw their local legislative district and ward boundaries.

Until the Census Bureau provides the information necessary to allocate people in prison to their addresses prior to incarceration, the problem should be dealt with by the state. On August 11, 2010, Governor Paterson signed legislation sponsored by Senator Eric Schneiderman directing LATFOR to reallocate prison populations back to verifiable “homes of record” where the prisoner resided prior to his or her incarceration for state legislative and local governmental redistricting. LATFOR will obtain the prison count population data from the New York State Department of Correctional Services. See Chapter Laws of 2010, Chapter 57, Part XX.

The Prison Policy Initiative downloaded the above text from the NY State Senate website on December 14, 2010.