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

Jessica Pupovac of Illinois Issues covers Illinois efforts to end prison-based gerrymandering.

by Andrew Adams, March 16, 2011

article thumbnailAs the Census Bureau was just beginning its count last year, State Rep. LaShawn Ford, a Chicago Democrat, sponsored a bill to correct prison-based gerrymandering in Illinois.

Jessica Pupovac, in a February 2010 article in Illinois Issues, wrote that:

50,000 prisoners throughout Illinois will be counted at [prisons located] in communities where they are unlikely to ever cast a ballot, send a child to school or access social services.

Now, a year later with the census complete, Rep. Ford’s bill is again live in the House.

Pupovac interviews U.S. Census Bureau’s Jim Dinwiddie who explains, “We’ve been doing that the same way since 1790.”

The Census Bureau has always counted prisoners at the location of the prison, but only recently in the era of mass incarceration has this effected legislative districts. For example, Lee County is comprised of four districts, each containing about 9,000 people. But the population of one of Lee’s districts is 25% prisoners. 75 voters in the district containing the prison have the same voting power as 100 voters in the other districts.

Nonetheless, Dinwiddie told Pupovac:

The main thing is that everybody understands this is how we do it, and then they can interpret the data the way they interpret the data. States may want to look at how they do their districting or fund allocation within the state. Maybe they want to exclude populations…. That’s up to them.

So Rep. Ford’s proposed legislation is fine with the Census Bureau. In fact, Pupovac tells us that, “At least seven counties in Illinois – Logan, Christian, LaSalle, Livingston, Crawford, Fulton and Knox – have taken it upon themselves to tweak their population figures so that prison populations simply aren’t included in city and county districting.”

Moreover, Illinois courts have already said that an inmate isn’t a resident of the prison. County of Franklin v. County of Henry, take this obvious point and make it explicit: “a person confined in prison under the judgment and sentence of a court does not thereby change his residence.”

41% of Illinois’ 50,000 inmates are from Chicago’s Cook County, but 90% of these inmates are incarcerated downstate. As Pupovac points out:

In 20 Illinois counties, more than half of the black population reported in the census as local residents are in fact incarcerated people from elsewhere in the state.

And

95 percent of the state and federal prison cells are located in disproportionately white counties.

Rep. Ford points out what many are already thinking:

It erodes minority influence in government. You have to have good representation for all people in government. That’s why it’s there. And if you don’t have everyone represented, then it’s not a good representative government.

Who would oppose such sensible legislation? Pupovac’s article points to State Rep. John Cavaletto, a Republican from downstate Salem whose district includes a prison population of about 3,500 prisoners.

Cavaletto offers two reasons to ignore existing state law and oppose Rep. Ford’s legislation. First, Cavaletto argues that counting incarcerated people in their home communities is “nothing more than a grab for representation.”

The real grab for representation is in Cavaletto’s district. Their votes have more power than their neighbors in other rural districts that don’t contain a prison.

Cavaletto insinuates that should prisoners be counted at home, his district, which already benefits from “extra representation”, will lose out on valuable federal and state funds. As Pupovac writes, “He fears that any changes in population could negatively affect the already struggling, rural communities he represents.” The bill, however, does not apply to federal or state funding.

Ford, the Chicago Rep. who sponsored the legislation, said:

Contrary to popular perception, most inmates serve short sentences, and [when they return home], many of them struggle to find the resources they need to avoid going back to prison.

So why does Cavaletto think that his struggling, rural white constituents deserve representation on the back of Ford’s struggling, urban, and largely black constituents?

“Members of communities I represent put themselves in harm’s way every day guarding Illinois’ most dangerous criminals,” says Cavaletto.

It’s clear to me that while Cavaletto is fighting to have these “dangerous criminals” bussed to his district, he only wants prisoners for their sheer numbers, not as constituents. As Pam Karlan wrote, because electoral districts are based on population, people in prison serve as essentially inert ballast in the redistricting process.

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.

Illinois should pass its bill, HB 94, to end prison-based gerrymandering and join other states giving everyone an equal vote regardless of where they live.

by Josina Morita, March 15, 2011

The Census Bureau released the data for Illinois last month, and redistricting for the state and many county governments is underway. Unfortunately, the data has a systematic flaw: the census counts incarcerated people as residents of the prison address, not as residents of their legal home addresses. Our state legislature and county governments must choose between correcting the census or diluting the votes of their own constituents. The practice of miscounting incarcerated persons as “residents” of a prison—which Illinois courts are clear is not a legal residence for redistricting—when drawing legislative districts in order to give extra influence to the districts that contain the prisons is called prison-based gerrymandering. It’s a problem that has until recently gone unnoticed, but can be easily addressed by excluding prisoners from census counts – a perfectly legal solution that many states and local governments have started to do. Illinois should pass HB 94 and join other states that have passed bills to end prison-based gerrymandering and ensure fair representation for all of its residents. In the past year, Maryland, Delaware, and New York have all passed bills outlawing prison-based gerrymandering; similar bills are under consideration in Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, and Oregon as well. Illinois should be the next to outlaw prison-based gerrymandering. House Bill 94 is under consideration in Springfield right now.

Should 49 people have the same voting power as 2,407? That’s the question that advocates of ending prison-based gerrymandering are asking.

Rural Illinois may provide the most striking example yet of prison-based gerrymandering in the entire nation. Lawrence County, Illinois looks likes it’s on the upswing with a 9% population growth rate, three times higher than the growth rate for the entire state. And it looks like it’s becoming a more attractive place to live for African-Americans with a 1,243% increase in African-Americans since 2000. But look a little closer. The Lawrence Correctional Center opened after the last census, holding 2,358 prisoners, over 1,400 of which were African-American. Those prisoners were counted in Lawrence County in the 2010 census, and will be counted there in the current redistricting process, diluting the voting strength of voters everywhere in the state.

Prison-based gerrymandering will dramatically impact Lawrence County’s redistricting. Those counted in the county, including prisoners, will be divided into 7 board districts of 2,407 people each. The district near the prison will only contain 49 people who can actually vote. The people who live next to Lawrence Correctional Center will have almost fifty times the voting power over the county board as other residents. People who live immediately adjacent to prisons shouldn’t have more influence in local government than those who happen to live in the same community but a little further away from the prison.

Last spring, my organization, the United Congress of Community and Religious Organizations, brought more than 300 people to Springfield to lobby for a bill that would have ended the anti-democratic practice of prison-based gerrymandering. We tried to persuade the state government to put an end to unfair redistricting in 2011 before it even got started. The legislature declined to pass the bill, and unless action is taken soon, democracy will suffer all over Illinois in places just like Lawrence County. Lawrence County isn’t unique, either. Of the 40 state prisons, most are located in rural downstate communities.

When legislators use those prison counts to draw state, county or municipal districts, they – unintentionally or not – give extra influence to the district with the prison at the expense of the residents of other districts throughout the state hat have the required number of people. Illinois law bars prisoners from the polls, but crediting them to the wrong districts results in a systematic shift in political power in Illinois.

The Prison Policy Initiative found that 11 of Illinois’ downstate districts include substantial prison populations, and if redrawn, district boundaries would have to change throughout the state. An even larger impact is seen in 4 rural counties, where the prison populations make up 18-25% of a single district, giving the residents of that district more influence on the county board than their neighbors. Peter Wagner has also remarked on the irony that some of the state legislators who support prison-based gerrymandering represent rural counties and cities that have quietly refused to engage in prison-based gerrymandering. When they draw their own districts, these rural counties and cities reject the idea of basing districts on the Census Bureau’s prison counts. Fundamentally, they protect their residents’ voting rights. Representatives in Springfield must be encouraged to follow the lead of these model counties and cities.

Ending the prison miscount gives communities with prisons a better understanding of what’s happening in their backyards, too. If the prisoners were excluded from the census, it’d be clear that Lawrence County actually lost residents. By looking only at the census numbers, it also looks like Lawrence County gained 1,490 African-American residents – but all of those are prisoners. Excluding prisoners from the census counts and ending prison-based gerrymandering helps all of us figure out what’s really going in our communities.

In 2008, the New York Times chronicled prison-based gerrymandering in the small rural town of Anamosa, Iowa, where residents whose town district contained a state penitentiary had 25 times the voting power in local elections as residents in other districts. The problem in Lawrence County, Illinois could be twice as dramatic as that in Iowa. Should the people who live next to Lawrence Correctional Center have nearly 50 times more say in local government than those who live further away from the prison?

The Illinois legislature should pass House Bill 94 to end to the prison miscount. The legislature should do this because it’s fair. It should pass the bill to protect the democratic principle of one person, one vote. They should pass it for those living in Lawrence County, and throughout the state that have the right to equal and fair representation.

Josina Morita is Executive Coordinator of the United Congress of Community and Religious Organizations. Last spring, the United Congress organized more than 300 people to go to Springfield and lobby for legislation that would have ended prison-based gerrymandering in the state. The legislature failed to pass the proposed legislation, but the struggle continues.

Comments (2)

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.

Guide about prison-based gerrymandering for reporters covering county/municipal redistricting in jurisdictions with large prisons

by Peter Wagner, March 10, 2011

We just released a Primer for reporters on county/municipal redistricting & prison-based gerrymandering.

report cover thumbnailThis week and next, our Alternative Spring Break students are reaching out to the reporters who cover local government in counties and cities with large prisons. They are sharing the primer and talking about how the leaders of each community are contending with a very interesting dilemma that is unfolding across the country.

From the introduction:

Who should use this primer: Reporters covering county or municipal redistricting in jurisdictions that contain prisons.

What’s at stake: Counties and cities that contain large prisons must decide if the people who live immediately adjacent to a prison should receive more political influence than everyone else. Prisoners are counted by the Census as residents of the prison location even though they can’t vote and aren’t county residents. More than 100 counties and cities across the country refuse to use prison counts to draw districts; but many others fail to notice the problem.

Will your local government allow an obscure Census Bureau practice to change the outcome of all future legislative decisions?

Please download and share with journalists who you think will find it helpful.

Sumter County Florida should reconsider its plan to give some people more than twice the influence of others just because they happen to live next to a large federal prison.

by Peter Wagner, March 3, 2011

Three weeks ago, I wrote about Sumter County Florida’s plan to engage in prison-based gerrymandering. According to the Daily Commercial those plans are unchanged even though the injustice is becoming clearer:

Even though they’re in his district, [County Commissioner Randy] Mask doesn’t see himself “representing” the inmates at the federal prison.

“I don’t know that I represent them,” Mask said last week. “No one’s called me about a pothole.”

Like Hays, Mask sees no problem with counting prisoners as permanent county residents.

“We’ve always done it that way,” he said.

I sent this letter to the editor yesterday:

Commissioner Mask should reconsider

Dear editor,

Sumter County Commissioner Randy Mask admits he doesn’t really represent the prisoners incarcerated in his district [Prisoners count, March 2]. But he proposes to continue the county’s practice of including the prison population when drawing county commissioner districts. He should reconsider.

The expanded federal prison complex could be about half of a district. Using the 8,000 prisoners as padding in his district will result in drawing his district with only about 8,000 county residents while the other 4 districts have about 16,000 people each.

Does it make sense to give some people twice the access to the County Commission as others just because they happen to live next to a large prison? I don’t think so, and neither do the residents of Florida’s Columbia, Hamilton, Holmes, Gulf and Madison counties or the residents of more than 100 rural counties and municipalities around the country which all refuse to use prison populations when drawing districts.

It’s true that Sumter County didn’t draw its districts as fairly as they could have in the past. But the prison is larger now and the county has new information. It’s time to do something new.

Peter Wagner
Prison Policy Initiative
Easthampton MA

The writer is Executive Director of the Prison Policy Initiative and the author of Prison-Based Gerrymandering in Florida Counties.

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.

A guide for redistricting advocates, shadow commissions and the media on avoiding prison-based gerrymandering.

by Brenda Wright and Peter Wagner, February 23, 2011

Prison-based gerrymandering is the practice of counting incarcerated persons as “residents” of a prison when drawing legislative districts in order to give extra influence to the districts that contain the prisons. The U.S. Constitution requires that election districts be roughly equal in size, so that everyone is represented equally in the political process. But prison-based gerrymandering distorts our democracy by artificially inflating the population numbers — and thus, the political clout — of districts with prisons, while diluting the political power of all other voters.

That this problem exists at all is largely an accident of two facts: (1) an outdated Census Bureau methodology that counts people in prison as residents of the correctional facilities, not of their legal home addresses; and (2) the skyrocketing rates of incarceration. Hopefully, in the future, the Census Bureau will eliminate the problem by counting incarcerated people as residents of their legal home addresses. Last year, three states — Maryland, Delaware and New York — had the foresight to pass legislation to eliminate prison-based gerrymandering within their borders. These three states now require that districts be based on Census data adjusted to reflect incarcerated people at their home addresses. More than a hundred rural counties and municipalities around the country have historically refused to engage in prison-based gerrymandering; they manually remove prison populations prior to drawing districts for local government. But most states and jurisdictions will still face the problem of prison-based gerrymandering in the upcoming round of redistricting.

When your legislature announces a proposed redistricting plan and invites public comment, you’ll need to act quickly to identify if and exactly how they used prisons to distort democracy in your state, county or city. This guide will tell you what to look for in the data and the state’s proposed plan in order to minimize the harm of prison-based gerrymandering.

(This guide assumes you have a mapping staff or sympathetic technical people on the redistricting body to assist you. Your technical allies can refer to our memo, Using the Census Bureau’s Advanced Group Quarters Table, which explains the timing, value, content and limitations of the Bureau’s prison count data.)

Protecting minority voting strength

Sometimes, a district that seems to have a majority-minority population really doesn’t, because of prison-based gerrymandering. If the minority “population” of the district consists of large number of incarcerated persons – who can’t vote – the district population numbers may be distorted. This creates districts that appear to give minorities the ability to elect the candidate of their choice, but in reality, they cannot. You need to examine any majority-minority district that includes a prison, to ensure that the district really has enough voting-eligible persons of color to create a viable majority with the ability to elect a candidate of choice to office.

Example: In order to settle a Voting Rights Act lawsuit, Somerset County Maryland intended to draw a district where African-Americans could elect a candidate of their choice after the 1990 and 2000 Censuses. But the inclusion of a large prison in the 1st Commission District split the sizable African-American resident voting population between two districts, leaving neither district able to elect a candidate of the African-American community’s choice. While the 1st Commission District appeared to be majority-African-American, in reality the district was not able to function as intended, because many of the purported African-American “residents” of the district were actually behind bars.

Similarly, although to different effect, prison populations sometimes create a false picture of racial and ethnic “diversity” within a district. Pointing out these examples is an effective way to raise the issue of prison-based gerrymandering and can be a powerful fact to raise if, as discussed in the next section, the state has under-populated districts that contain prisons.

Example: District 2B in Western Maryland drawn after the 2000 Census appears to be 15% African-American. But nearly all of that African-American population actually consists of incarcerated residents from other parts of the state who are unable to vote or to interact with the community in any way. The actual population of the district is overwhelmingly white.

Example: In 2002, the New York State Senate deliberately underpopulated districts in the upstate region while overpopulating districts in the downstate region. This problem ran parallel to the fact that the Census Bureau credited downstate residents to upstate census counts, and together served to dilute minority voting rights. For example, one of those upstate districts was the 59th Senate District, drawn to contain 294,256 people instead of the 306,072 that each district should have contained. Using Census data, the state reported that the district contained 6,273 African Americans, but three quarters of this population was incarcerated residents of other parts of the state. The legislature used the prison population to disguise the fact that the district had the smallest African-American population of any senate district in the state and they deliberately underpopulated that district to give it extra influence.

Keeping prison-based gerrymandering from making other malapportionment issues worse

Advocates should examine what percentage of each district is actually incarcerated, and how that interacts with the existing population deviations in the proposed districts. Keep in mind that in the strange world of redistricting, “underpopulated” districts have more political power than “overpopulated” districts, because in underpopulated districts, fewer people get the same opportunity to elect a representative as a larger number of people crowded into an “overpopulated” district. For that reason, a district that nominally falls within the 5% deviation rule applicable to state and local districts, but would fall outside that deviation without the prison population, should raise a red flag, and should be examined carefully to determine if the deviation should be reduced. Apart from that specific situation, any districts having large prisons should be scrutinized to avoid underpopulation of such districts compared to ideal district size, because including prison population magnifies the underpopulation of the district.

Note that the inverse is also a concern, even if we don’t have precise block-level data about the pre-incarceration home residence of people in prison who are currently being counted as “residents” of prisons. For example, you can use the fact that incarcerated people should have been counted at home to argue against extreme overpopulation of urban districts where incarcerated people disproportionately come from.

Limiting the vote enhancement in districts with prisons

Advocates should consider whether, if insufficient time remains to collect the home addresses of incarcerated people for this round of redistricting, the legislature can be persuaded to declare all incarcerated people to live at “unknown addresses” and not include them in the individual districts that contain prisons. (See Interview with Justin Levitt of the Brennan Center for Justice for more on why “unknown addresses” is superior to the Census Bureau’s status quo. )

If the legislature will not consider removing the prison populations from individual districts, advocates should examine ways to limit the magnitude of the vote enhancement to each district that contains a prison. Advocates should determine what percentage of each proposed district is actually incarcerated, and consider whether it is possible to configure the districts so that multiple large prisons are not concentrated in an individual district, thereby lessening the size of the vote enhancement in the prison districts. Similarly, if a single block contains a massive prison, advocates should consider whether the block could be split in two, so that the prison population can be placed in two different districts, thereby lessening the vote enhancement in any one district.

Resources:

  • The Public Mapping Project is an open source redistricting package intended for shadow redistricting commissions and advocates. The software is building in support for advocates who wish to use alternative datasets, including Census data adjusted to remove prison populations, in their plans.
  • Using the Census Bureau’s Advanced Group Quarters Table
  • Data about prison-based gerrymandering, links to the database of historical (2005-2010) correctional statistics, and where, in May, we will post shapefiles with the Census Bureau’s group quarters data table and adjusted redistricting data that removes the prison populations and annotations of the blocks that contain correctional facilities with facility names, types, and more detailed demographic data.

Peter Wagner is Executive Director of the Prison Policy Initiative and Brenda Wright is director of the Democracy Program at Demos.

Actualización 28 de Marzo, 2012: Este articulo ahora está disponible en Español
Update March 28, 2012: This article is now available in Spanish.

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Using prison populations to pad an Ark. Justice of the Peace district gives those residents 3 times the political power of residents in other districts.

by Peter Wagner, February 18, 2011

The Supreme Court said that districts must be drawn so that each person has the same access to government, regardless of where she lives. But a long standing flaw in the Census that counts incarcerated people in the wrong place undermines that principle.

One dramatic example is in Jackson County, Arkansas, where 64% of Justice of the Peace District 5 is incarcerated at the Grimes-McPherson Correctional Facility. Every group of 34 people who live in that district near the prison are given as much influence over the future of their county as 100 people in any of the other districts.

The solution? Ideally, the Census Bureau would count incarcerated people as residents of their home addresses; but Lincoln County, Lee County and Forrest City Arkansas all came upon a perfectly viable interim solution: don’t include the prison populations when drawing Justice of the Peace and city council districts.

Lincoln County didn’t really have much choice in the matter, as otherwise the prison would have been two districts with no voters all by itself.

Stay tuned for our research in other Arkansas counties. Interested in other states? See our list of local governments that exclude prison populations when drawing districts, and the list of prison-based gerrymandering problems we have identified.

Comments (2)

New coalition says a fast redistricting timeline does not mean prison-based gerrymandering can not be addressed.

by Peter Wagner, February 16, 2011

New Jersey has the fastest redistricting timeline in the nation, but that doesn’t mean the state can’t address prison-based gerrymandering. That’s what members of the Integrated Justice Alliance have been telling legislators at hearings held across the state in recent weeks.

In their testimony, the Alliance called upon the state to follow the lead of Maryland, Delaware and New York and adjust the federal census to avoid prison-based gerrymandering. They’ve presented alternative ways for the state to avoid and minimize prison-based gerrymandering, and even presented the Apportionment Commission with the demographic data from the 12 Census blocks that contain the state’s federal and state prisons.

“Having presented testimony at four public hearings over the past two weeks, we have concrete indications that the public officials who sit on the Apportionment Commission of New Jersey have heard us and are ready to take some action during their redistricting process. It will be another victory for NJ in correcting racial and economic injustices,” said Alliance Chairwoman Margaret Atkins.

The Integrated Justice Alliance’s strategy around this and other criminal justice issues in NJ is being developed by a core steering group of 22 organizations who advocate for effective public policies before, during, and after incarceration in New Jersey. The Alliance grew out of another coalition that led an 18 month listening tour of community-based public hearings informed by those most directly affected by the criminal justice system around the state to craft and ultimately pass three major pieces of legislation addressing incarceration and reintegration policies and practices in New Jersey.

The Alliance’s submitted testimony, exhibits and contact information for the leaders are available on the New Jersey campaign page.

“I have found that most people don’t even realize that this kind of gerrymandering even takes place,” said Brother Aula Sumbry, Chair of the Racial and Economic Disparities Subcommittee of the Integrated Justice Alliance. “My prayer is that, as we make the citizens of this state and the Apportionment Commission aware of the fundamental unfairness of Prison Based Gerrymandering, the Commission will at minimum not continue the practice of padding the political power of the communities where prisons are located at the expense of the home communities of the prisoners and the rest of the state.”

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