by Peter Wagner, September 9, 2010
Julian Aguilar has an excellent article in the Texas Tribune: Lawmakers Urge a Change in How Inmates are Counted.
by Peter Wagner, September 7, 2010
Frank Green has an excellent story in the Richmond Times-Dispatch about the impact of prison-based gerrymandering in county government in Virginia. After the 2000 Census, the legislature passed a law allowing counties with census populations that are more than 12% incarcerated to exclude the prison population when drawing districts. Unfortunately, this left a number of counties with large prison populations ineligible for the new law and required to draw districts that give the prison districts extra influence.
In Southampton County, for example, the residents who live near the prison have more than twice the influence over county affairs as residents of other districts. Ideally, the legislature will change the law and allow all counties to exclude the prison populations from the districts if they wish.
For more information, see Frank Green’s article, Legislature urged to change prisoners’ role in districting or our Virginia research page.
by Peter Wagner, September 7, 2010
Jeff Reichert, director of the documentary film Gerrymandering, and I have a blog post on the Huffington Post: What Is Prison-Based Gerrymandering?
We talk about the filming of the prison-based gerrymandering segment, and we put that segment in to the national context.
by Peter Wagner, September 1, 2010
I just received this press release from the Delaware House Majority announcing the governor’s signature of the bill ending prison-based gerrymandering. You can also read the bill or the Prison Policy Initiative / Demos press release from the bill’s passage.
Delaware House of Representatives House Majority Caucus
For Immediate Release:
Contact: Drew Volturo
September 1, 2010
Work: (302) 744-4001
Cell: (302) 593-5969
WILMINGTON – Legislation ensuring that the population of each Delaware municipality and legislative district is accurately counted was signed into law on Tuesday afternoon.
Sponsored by Rep. Helene M. Keeley, House Bill 384 requires that inmates in a Delaware prison at the time of the decennial U.S. Census will be counted in the area they resided immediately prior to incarceration instead of being counted at the address of the correctional facility. Under the measure, the state would not be able to count prisoners who did not live in Delaware before they were incarcerated as part of the population. This would apply in determining the reapportionment and redistricting for the state.
The current practice of including prison populations in the districts in which the facilities are located artificially pads those districts and leaves inmates’ home districts under-represented. This skews research and demographic data that local governments and various groups use for planning purposes and to allocate resources.
“Most people who are in prison are not there for long periods of time,” said Rep. Keeley, D-Wilmington South. “When they are released, they often return to the communities they lived in before they were in prison. Having an accurate district population count helps government and nonprofit agencies plan and offer services more effectively.”
Maryland’s legislature passed its “No Representation Without Population Act” in April, becoming the first state to enact such a measure. New York State also passed a similar measure this summer.
According to the Prison Policy Initiative, which advocates for passage of such laws, four states (Colorado, Mississippi, New Jersey and Virginia) encourage or even require local governments to exclude prison populations during redistricting. The group also lists Wilmington as an example of cities throughout the country that are affected by prison-based gerrymandering.
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by Peter Wagner, August 31, 2010
Lisa Tindell cites our research in an article in Escambia County Alabama’s Atmore Advance: County omits prison count:
The 2010 U.S. Census will determine more than just how many people live in a given regional area. Those numbers are also used when counties across the state of Alabama determine where district lines are drawn for government representation.
Escambia County makes determinations on those district lines based on actual residential population, unlike other counties that may use prison population as part of district residents.
Escambia County Administrator Tony Sanks said the population of prisons in the county is excluded when district lines are determined.
“The district lines in the county were redrawn in 2001 following the last Census,” Sanks said. “The prison count was not included when a determination was made on the number of residents living in a particular area were considered.”
Sanks said the reason for that is simple — prisons aren’t served by the county.
“We don’t serve the prison systems in any way so they simply are not included as constituents in a district,” Sanks said. “They maintain their own roads and take care of their own services. Since we don’t serve them, we don’t count them as part of a district.”
In my view, the ideal solution is for the Census Bureau to count incarcerated people at their home, not prison, addresses. But Escambia County’s solution is a good interim step that avoids giving some districts extra representation just because they happen to contain a large prison.
Read the rest of the article.
by Peter Wagner, August 26, 2010
Host: Peter Wagner, Executive Director, Prison Policy Initiative
Guest:
Bruce Riley, organizer at Direct Action for Rights and Equality, Providence Rhode Island
Recorded: June, 2010, Aired: August 2010
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.
Our guest today is Bruce Riley, an organizer at DARE in Rhode Island, Direct Action for Rights and Equality. Bruce has been spearheading the campaign to end prison-based gerrymandering in Rhode Island. Welcome, Bruce.
Continue reading →
by Peter Wagner, August 26, 2010
Tom Howe has has a lengthy article Where should inmates be counted for redistricting? in the Texas House Research Organizations’ Interim News.
The article cites a lot of our research, including:
by Peter Wagner, August 22, 2010
The New York Times cites our research on prison-based gerrymandering in the New York Senate, in upstate counties, and in Rome, New York in an editorial in Monday’s paper, An End to Prison Gerrymandering.
The editorial hails New York State’s new law to end prison-based gerrymandering and says it should be emulated around the country.
by Peter Wagner, August 19, 2010
The Watertown Daily Times prints my letter to the editor where I explain that the state Legislature’s decision to count incarcerated people at home for redistricting purposes has a big upside for St. Lawrence and Jefferson counties that nobody is talking about.
by Peter Wagner, August 18, 2010
The grand total is $0, yes that says “zero.” New York’s new law ending prison-based gerrymandering won’t affect funding.
New York is not changing the way the U.S. Census counts people in prison, rather, it is adjusting the way that data is used in redistricting to comply with the New York Constitution. No federal or state funding formulas will be affected by the decision of a state to adjust their redistricting data because no federal or state funding formula is based on state redistricting data.
Even if the Census Bureau were to, in the future, count incarcerated people at their home addresses, we’ve long explained that virtually every federal and state funding formula is too smart to be fooled by prison populations. Despite assumptions to the contrary, there is very little impact from the prison miscount on funding in general.
If money is not at stake, why did 3 states pledge to count incarcerated people at home for redistricting purposes? Because those states want to ensure that legislative districts are drawn fairly, and that no district gets undue influence just because it contains a large correctional facility.
That is reason enough.
Learn more about the organization behind the Prison Gerrymandering Project.
We explore the racial disparity inside prisons.
Rome finally corrected the problem of prison gerrymandering within its borders; other cities and counties need the Census Bureau's help.
This is not the first time a policy barred people of color from the polls and transferred their political power to white voters.
Play (21:24, 11.3MB)