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

The New York Times published a great editorial praising the New York Supreme Court's decision to uphold the law that ended prison-based gerrymandering.

by Leah Sakala, December 22, 2011

New York Times editorial thumbnail Today, the New York Times printed an editorial praising a New York Supreme Court judge’s decision to uphold the law that ended prison-based gerrymandering in New York. The law had been challenged by plaintiffs in the Little v. LATFOR lawsuit.

As the New York Times editorial board observed:

Many counties with large prisons within their borders have rejected the practice of counting inmates as “residents” when they saw how doing so allowed lightly populated towns near prisons to hijack a disproportionate share of political power while diminishing the power of towns that did not have prisons.

Legislators from upstate districts who challenged the law are well aware of what goes on at the county level. But they were desperate to hold on to a process that apportions political power based not on real constituents but on sleight of hand.

In his ruling, Justice Eugene Devine of the State Supreme Court said the plaintiffs had failed to show that the state law was “anything other than rationally based and constitutionally sound.” The plaintiffs, who are appealing, harm the political process by fighting a law that ensures fairer representation.

All the case documents and selected press coverage are available on our Little v. LATFOR page.

HB13 will give any county faced with drawing a district that would be more than 12% incarcerated the option of choosing to not include the prison populations when drawing the districts.

by Peter Wagner, December 21, 2011

A bill that will give more counties in Virginia the option to avoid prison-based gerrymandering has been reintroduced in the House. It passed unanimously last session only to die in a Senate committee.

Historically, Virginia law required counties to base their legislative districts on federal Census data, denying Virginia counties the flexibility exercised by counties in other states to choose the population basis of their required redistricting. The Census Bureau counts people in prison – who by state law can’t vote and are not considered residents of the prison – as residents of the prison location. When used for rural county redistricting, this data can give extra influence to the people who live next to a large prison, and dilute the votes of residents in other districts in the same county.

In 2001, Virginia amended the law, giving counties where incarcerated people make up more than 12% of the Census population the option to avoid padding the Board of Supervisors district that contains the prison with the prison population.

Unfortunately, the 2001 law did not give all counties relief from state-mandated prison-based gerrymandering. For example, Southampton County’s prison population was too small to benefit from the 2001 law, yet the county was still forced to draw a district that was more than half incarcerated. This gave the residents of the district with the prison more than twice the political influence of the residents of other districts in the county.

The bill, HB13, has been pre-filed by Delegate Riley Ingram (R-Chesterfield, Henrico, Prince George, City of Hopewell) and will give any county faced with drawing a district that would be more than 12% incarcerated the option of choosing to not include the prison populations when drawing the districts. The change in the bill is subtle, but it will more than double the number of rural counties eligible to keep prison populations from distorting their districts.

Ideally, the Census Bureau or the state would count incarcerated people at their home addresses for state and local redistricting purposes. Prison and election-reform advocates are urging the Census Bureau to count incarcerated people at home in the next Census, and four states (California, Delaware, Maryland and New York) have passed legislation that applies to state legislative redistricting. But HB13 is an important step in the right direction towards ending prison-based gerrymandering in Virginia.

For more information:

Comments (2)

Baltimore Sun op-ed explains how Maryland's law ending prison-based gerrymandering protects minority voting power.

by Leah Sakala, December 20, 2011

Maryland’s No Representation Without Population act ended prison-based gerrymandering throughout the state, but the law is currently being challenged in federal court.

The Baltimore Sun just published a great op-ed defending the law. As Ajmel Quereshi and Athar Haseebullah explain, Maryland’s landmark civil rights law strengthens minority voting power:

While the merits of taking away an incarcerated person’s vote may same fair to some, few think that the communities from which incarcerated people hail should likewise be punished by having their voting power diminished. But that is precisely what happens.

When a person from an urban and largely minority community, such as Baltimore, is convicted, that individual is moved to a prison to serve his or her sentence. These prisons are often located in rural, primarily white, communities. When congressional districts are drawn to ensure there is a roughly equal number of people in each congressional district, prisoners are not counted as a part of their home district, but instead are counted as part of the population at the location of their prison — even though they cannot vote in that district.

This policy drains the political power of the incarcerated individual’s home community and adds to the political power of the area where the prison is located.

Understanding the deleterious effects of this policy, Maryland enacted the No Representation Without Population Act in 2010. By doing so, Maryland finally required that prisoners be counted in the communities from which they came and to which they are likely to return when they regain their right to vote. The No Representation Without Population Act was spearheaded by the Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland and widely supported by state and national civil rights groups, including the Maryland State Conference of the NAACP and the ACLU of Maryland.

The No Representation Without Population Act was implemented to correct injustice. It is perhaps not surprising that those funding this lawsuit are attempting to fool Marylanders. If the act is struck down, conservative districts with large prisons will once again get extra credit for the prison populations — and prisoners’ home districts will receive less than a fair and equal voice in the political process. The result would be minority communities that are drained of their political power — again.

Although everything is in order for the NY redistricting task force to follow the law ending prison-based gerrymandering, members are still digging in their heels. But for how long?

by Peter Wagner, December 15, 2011

Although a lawsuit by Republican Senators seeking to use prison populations to shore up their under-populated districts was thrown out two weeks ago, their efforts to sabotage the law are still with us.

In 2010, Governor Patterson signed a landmark civil rights law requiring that incarcerated people be counted as residents of their home addresses for state and local redistricting purposes. Although most upstate counties already reject the Census Bureau’s prison counts for their own county redistricting, upstate Senators cried foul. And when they retook the majority in the state Senate, the new leadership promptly called for a time-out on implementing the law.

Nine upstate Senators with large prisons filed suit to permanently stop the law. Not among the plaintiffs, however, was Senator Nozzolio, who chairs the Crime Victims, Crime and Corrections committee and who has thousands of prison cells in his district. Instead, in his role as co-chair of the legislature’s redistricting taskforce, he was a defendant and used that position to tell the court that the task force would not defend the lawsuit.

The taskforce even announced that implementation of the law was on hold pending the outcome of the lawsuit. Civil rights groups, good government groups and editorial boards rightly objected to legislators unilaterally pledging to ignore a law before being told to do so by a judge. Under such pressure, the taskforce began to talk about following the law, but the tangible progress hasn’t been forthcoming.

Figuring out where incarcerated people reside and adjusting the Census Bureau data takes time, but it is not difficult. Maryland has a similar law and they implemented their version in a few months. The prisons provided the data a year ago, and all the taskforce had to do was process it. Eventually, the Assembly completed the process on its own back in September, and asked the Senate to approve their work. Instead, Senator Nozzolio raised challenges to the Assembly’s choice of software. And so the just-for-show bickering continued until the Judge threw out the Senate’s legal case and the charade started to collapse.

Given that they claim they intended to follow the law, the lawsuit’s dismissal shouldn’t have had an impact on the taskforce’s scheduled meeting last week to discuss implementation of the law. Instead, running out of legal arguments, they canceled the meeting.

My best guess is that the Senate’s strategy is to run out the clock. At some point the Senate intends to sheepishly look up and try to tell a federal judge overseeing New York’s compliance with the Voting Rights Act, “Gee, we really wanted to implement this civil rights law, but we found it harder than expected and we just ran out of time.”

If that’s their strategy, it could end sooner than they think. In November, a group of citizens asked a federal judge to take over redistricting. They pointed to several reasons why they do not expect the legislature to complete redistricting in time for the primary elections, and the law ending prison-based gerrymandering was a key part of their argument.

I don’t know how the federal judge will rule, but it would be rational for New Yorkers to conclude that the redistricting taskforce is either unable or unwilling to comply with the law. Clearly, if the redistricting taskforce doesn’t get to work, somebody is going to put them out of a job real soon.

Comments (1)

Census group quarters data files can now be used to find correctional facilities' locations in Google Earth.

by Leah Sakala, December 14, 2011

I was just working on a research project in which we needed to identify which state legislative districts had prisons in them. The state had released Google Earth files of its district maps, but getting the prison location data in the same format seemed like a tricky task without using expensive and complex GIS software. Luckily we’ve identified a simple solution: plugging the data from our Correctional Facilities Locator 2010 (a national database of correctional facilities counted by the 2010 census) directly into Google Earth.

By adding the relevant state’s Locator 2010 map file as a “Network Link” in Google Earth, I was able to quickly and efficiently pinpoint the locations of all correctional facilities in each state legislative district. Furthermore, each correctional facility entry includes the Census Bureau’s 2010 reported facility population and, when available, the name and type of the facility. Also, for every census block there is a link to detailed demographic information including race and age data for all incarcerated people counted in that block, providing the information necessary for in-depth analyses.

We’ve written up detailed instructions on how you can use this straightforward Google Earth method as well.

Letter to the editor by North Country resident Dan Jenkins clarifies misinformation printed in a recent Plattsburgh Press Republican editorial.

by Leah Sakala, December 14, 2011

In a compelling letter to the editor, Franklin County resident Dan Jenkins clarifies misinformation printed in a recent Plattsburgh Press Republican editorial about New York’s law that ended prison-based gerrymandering:

TO THE EDITOR: The Press-Republican editorial “Inequity must be addressed” of Nov. 29 is a fascinating mix of misinformation.

The manner in which the prison population of New York state will be counted for state and local redistricting is an important public topic. So it is important for the public to be provided with clear and accurate information.

First of all, the editorial incorrectly refers to “congressional” redistricting. The new state law that counts inmates at their homes of record will have absolutely no effect on the realignment of federal congressional district boundaries because those are based on federal census figures, period.

Secondly, the editorial claims that “20,000 inmates in New York’s prisons have no known home addresses.” This unattributed figure was disputed by Peter Cutler, spokesman for the State Department of Correctional Services, as quoted by Joseph Spector, Gannet News Service, in an article published about 10 days ago.

And finally, the editorial seems to suggest that even our counties should include the number of inmates found in state and federal prisons when drawing up local legislative districts or when calculating weighted votes.

Clinton, Franklin and Essex counties have, very properly, decided that prison populations should be deducted from census figures for purposes of local reapportionment. Otherwise, the concentration of inmates in places like Dannemora and Malone can force the creation of county districts with very few actual voters, and this bizarre result will fail to survive a legal challenge in the courts.

If the Press-Republican truly advocates that Clinton, Franklin and Essex counties all reverse course and include prisoner counts for purposes of local reapportionment, then you should make that clear.

Compliments to the Press-Republican for bringing public attention to this issue.

Daniel Jenkins, Tupper Lake

[After the letter was written, but before it was printed, a New York Supreme Court judge ruled to uphold the law ending prison-based gerrymandering, ensuring that incarcerated people in New York will be reallocated to their home addresses for redistricting purposes.]

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office has issued a press release praising State Supreme Court Justice Devine’s decision to uphold the law ending prison-based gerrymandering in New York.

by Leah Sakala, December 7, 2011

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office has issued a press release praising State Supreme Court Justice Devine’s decision to uphold the law ending prison-based gerrymandering in New York:

“Today’s decision by Judge Devine is a victory for fundamental fairness and equal representation. The court affirmed the legality of counting incarcerated individuals in their home communities for the purposes of redrawing district lines, rather than the districts where they are in prison,” said Attorney General Schneiderman.

“As a lawmaker, I fought to end the practice of prison-based gerrymandering that distorted the democratic process and undermined the principle of ‘one person, one vote.’ This decision affirms and applies a fair standard to the drawing of state legislative districts and makes it easier for counties to do the same by providing them with an accurate data set.”

In an interview on WPFM, PPI’s Exec. Dir. Peter Wagner offered some clarifications about the lawsuit filed to repeal the law that ended prison-based gerrymandering in Maryland.

by Leah Sakala, December 7, 2011

In an interview with Gloria Minott this morning on WPFM, PPI’s Executive Director Peter Wagner offered some clarifications about the Fletcher v. Lamone lawsuit filed to repeal the No Representation Without Population Act that ended prison-based gerrymandering in Maryland.

“The plaintiffs are filing this lawsuit arguing that Maryland’s law, the No Representation Without Population Act, dilutes the votes of African-Americans,” he said, “They have this backwards.”

Peter then explained how Maryland’s first-in-the-nation law increases, not diminishes, minority voting power in Maryland, bringing Maryland’s redistricting process closer in line with the federal “one person, one vote” principle.

To learn more about the case or to read case documents, visit our Fletcher v. Lamone page.

Unfortunate myths fuel NY officials' concerns about ending prison-based gerrymandering in New York State.

by Peter Wagner, December 7, 2011

Last Friday, New York Judge Eugene Devine dismissed a lawsuit filed by Republican lawmakers that sought a return to prison-based gerrymandering. North Country Public Radio covered the reactions of Senator Little and one local official, giving us a great opportunity to address several myths about ending prison-based gerrymandering in New York State. The radio story reports:

The ruling was also a blow to some local leaders, whose communities rely heavily on inmates to bolster their populations. Howard Maneely is town supervisor of Malone.

“Malone is unique, we’re a small town. We have three state prisons here. About one-third of our population are confined to the three correctional facilities. If we take them away from our count, from our population of Malone, we will have hardly any representation at all. Our district will be so big, we’ll hardly know our legislators anymore.”

Putting aside the constitutional question about why legislative districts are based on population and not other factors, I wonder which level of government Supervisor Maneely is worried about and if there might be some fundamental misunderstandings behind his concerns.

On the level of the state senate, with or without the prison population Malone is a tiny part of Senator Little’s district. The prison is a big employer and a newfound priority for Senator Little, but the town itself isn’t a big player in the district. Of course, if Malone has a town-specific need for Senator Little’s attention, they will need something that Senator Little responds to: votes. And that’s one thing that Malone’s prisons can’t provide.

But there is one place where the fact that Malone’s population is one-third incarcerated might have an immediate effect on the town’s ability to influence policy: the county legislature.

I suspect the Supervisor is worrying that without using the prison as padding, the town of Malone’s clout in the country legislature would plummet. Except, of course, it never had that clout in the first place. Franklin County has always refused to use the prison populations when drawing country districts. North Country Public Radio summarized the County Chairman’s explanation of avoiding prison-based gerrymandering as a “no-brainer.”

Franklin County was one of 13 New York counties that refused to use the prison populations when drawing county districts after the 2000 Census. In neighboring Essex County, the Board of Supervisors put their rationale in the Local Law:

Persons incarcerated in state and federal correctional institutions live in a separate environment, do not participate in the life of Essex County, and do not affect the social and economic character of the towns in which … the correctional facilities where they are incarcerated are located.

The inclusion of these federal and state correctional facility inmates unfairly dilutes the votes or voting weight of persons residing in other towns within Essex County. This is particularly so if the 1,898 inmates in the town of North Elba are included in its population total of 8,661 since those inmates would then represent 21.914% of the town of North Elba’s population.

The Board of Supervisors finds that the population base to be utilized in and by the plan apportioning the Essex County Board of Supervisors should exclude state and federal inmates.

Unfortunately, not all counties avoided prison-based gerrymandering like Supervisor Maneely’s county did. That’s why the law passed last year that ended prison-based gerrymandering also amended the Municipal Home Rule Law to require county and municipal governments to avoid prison-based gerrymandering. Senator Little’s lawsuit attacked that part of the law as well, but fortunately the Judge’s decision last week protects the entire law.

I wonder if Supervisor Maneely’s concern may be motivated in part by a separate misunderstanding. One clue may be the fact that he recently told the New York state redistricting Task Force: “We provide services for [incarcerated people] and those facilities, and we need that count….”

Many people don’t know this – and certain upstate Senators are reluctant to clear up this confusion held by their supporters – but the bill in New York does not apply to funding. The bill changes where incarcerated people are counted for redistricting purposes only. Federal and state funds are distributed by a series of complicated formulas, none of which rely on state or local redistricting data. No state or federal funding based on population will be affected. And any payments that the prison system currently makes for town services provided, ie. water, sewer, etc., are based on the prisons actual usage and are unrelated to the Census counts.

Finally, prison-based gerrymandering is over in New York. People who live in state legislative districts that do not have prisons will no longer have their votes diluted. People who live in counties or municipalities with prisons but not immediately adjacent to the prisons will also no longer have their votes diluted. The establishment of one clear standard for state, county and municipal government will set positive example for other states to follow.

And what lessons should other states draw from New York’s experience? Clear up these confusions about how these laws work and who benefits early and often.

Judge rejects Senators' lawsuit, says law ending prison-based gerrymandering must stand. Legislature further postpones implementation of law. Coincidence?

by Peter Wagner, December 5, 2011

Jimmy Vielkind writes in the Albany Times Union‘s Capital Confidential Blog that New York’s redistricting task force has postponed today’s meeting about implementing the law ending prison-based gerrymandering.

The Assembly did their reallocation months ago and was happy with their work, and, while it looked to me like the Senate was either stalling or planning to ignore the law, Senator Nozzolio repeatedly told the press that, “the law will be complied with, whatever that law is. Impressions to the contrary are simply not accurate.” In fact, some of his quotes appeared a little testy regarding the letter that the Prison Policy Initiative and other civil rights groups sent urging the redistricting task force to — until told otherwise by a judge — follow the law.

I can’t imagine what could be the hold up now. Did something happen?

Oh, that’s right. On Friday, New York Supreme Court Justice Eugene Devine threw out the Little v. LATFOR case the Republicans filed to overturn the law ending prison-based gerrymandering in New York.

Comments (1)

  — Blog Archives —     — Best of —  


Stay Informed


Get the latest updates:



Share on 𝕏 Donate