Census count hurts prison towns right now

by Peter Wagner, March 28, 2006

This is a letter I sent last week to the editor of the Tribune-Star in Terre Haute, Indiana responding to Mark Bennett’s column If a coalition of congressmen get their way, Vigo County and Congressional District 8 could be facing a serious population decrease.

Dear editor,

I share Mark Bennett’s concern that how prisoners are counted in the Census could become a “tug-of-war between cities and rural communities.” If that happens, it will obscure how the current Census policy hurts rural communities right now.

Bennett is right that counting prisoners at home would cost Vigo County some clout in the state legislature and in Congress. But while the 8th Congressional District has more prisoners than most — the district is 1% prisoners — that small amount of extra clout comes at a big price for local democracy.

The city of Terre Haute is divided in to 6 council districts, each of which has roughly the same Census population. The Supreme Court’s “One Person One Vote” rule requires districts to be drawn to contain the same number of people. In theory, this gives every resident of the city the same access to government regardless of where she or he lives.

I say “in theory” because the Census Bureau counted 1,764 prisoners at the United States Penitentiary as if they were residents of District 1 in southwest Terre Haute. The prisoners cannot vote, but the votes of the remaining 7,778 residents of District 1 have as much clout as the approximately 10,000 residents in each other district. Using prisoners as population gives each group of 8 residents in District 1 the same clout as 10 residents in other districts.

Left uncorrected, this problem is about to get worse. The federal prison complex has grown to contain 2,910 prisoners. If the next Census was taken today, the resulting District 1 would be 30% prisoners, giving each group of 7 District 1 residents the clout of 10 elsewhere in the city.

If the Census Bureau started counting prisoners at their home addresses, Terre Haute’s residents would have a more equal City Council, and there would be little impact on the city’s federal funding.

For example, many grant programs shun “per-capita income” statistics to use “household income” or “poverty status” because those statistics do not include prisoners and other group quarters populations. Still other grant programs require that institutional populations be deducted from the population figures. Simply put, most government programs are designed with sufficient precision that they are not affected by where prisoners are counted.

Ironically, the place that prisoner counts most frequently affect funding is in the distribution of funds within rural communities. Like our analysis of the impact on democracy, the biggest victims of this census policy are the rural residents who live near — but not immediately next to — large prisons.

Peter Wagner
Executive Director
Prison Policy Initiative

Distorting political reality — Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial

by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial board, March 17, 2006

Juneau County is the 43rd fastest-growing county in the country, owing to a nearly 5% increase in population between 2004 and 2005. Put bluntly, Juneau County’s gain is Milwaukee County’s pain.

Of the gain of 1,251 people, 950 were inmates at the relatively new New Lisbon Correctional Institution.

The pain comes in how the U.S. Census Bureau counts prison inmates. The prison is viewed as inmates’ “usual residence,” the standard the bureau uses to count us all. But those census numbers are traditionally used, for instance, in redrawing state political and congressional boundaries every 10 years and in disbursing federal funds.

This serves to distort political and fiscal realities. For instance, according to the state Department of Corrections, the Juneau prison currently has 1,006 inmates, 10 of whom were convicted from Juneau County. So, 996 were convicted elsewhere, 453 of these from Milwaukee County. Extrapolate these numbers for all state prisons. See the problem?

Rural Michigan newspaper calls for change in Census counts of prisoners

by Peter Wagner, February 23, 2006

On Feb. 9, the Jackson City Patriot in Jackson Michigan published an editorial calling for the Census Bureau to change how it counts incarcerated people because it “is time to stop reporting a misleading census profile about prison communities.”

Counting Convicts: Do it here or there?

Editorial published in the Jackson City Patriot, February 9, 2006

For 216 years, the U.S. Census has been counting prison convicts by the “usual residence” rule. That is, they’re counted in the place they hang their hats, eat and sleep — that is, where they are incarcerated. At Congress’ directive, the Census Bureau is considering whether a change is in order. We welcome the review.

Why would anyone want prisoners counted in any other way than by the “usual residence” rule? Because the flaws of that policy are becoming apparent.

New report shows “Why the Census Bureau can and must start collecting the home addresses of incarcerated people”

by Peter Wagner, February 17, 2006

In November 2005, the Appropriations Committee directed the Census Bureau to undertake a study of using “prisoners’ permanent homes of record, as opposed to their incarceration sites” in the decennial Census. Congress directed the Census Bureau to report its findings to Congress within 90 days. That report is expected soon.

In advance of that report and to aid the Census Bureau’s own investigation, Eric Lotke, Andrew Beveridge and I submitted a 24 page report to the Bureau on February 10: Why the Census Bureau can and must start collecting the home addresses of incarcerated people.

The report reviews the legal and practical reasons why the Census Bureau should change how it counts incarcerated people and then discusses the practical benefits that home-address enumeration would bring to Census Bureau operations.

Fixing the Census Bureau’s mistakes is admirable, but not every government can do it

by Peter Wagner, January 5, 2006

In past articles I have celebrated the efforts of jurisdictions to adjust the federal census data so that it meets their needs and people are counted in the right place. These efforts are vivid evidence that people would prefer that the Census counted incarcerated people differently. However, that these jurisdictions can fix the Census Bureau’s mistakes does not mean the Bureau should continue to make them. In order to fairly serve its data users in state and local government, the Census Bureau must change how it counts prisoners. As I will show, it is not only inconvenient for data users to fix the Census Bureau’s mistakes, for some communities it would be impossible for practical or legal reasons.

Phantom Voters, Thanks to the Census — New York Times Editorial

by New York Times, December 27, 2005

New York Times Editorial Board, December 27, 2005

The first Constitution took for granted that enslaved people could not vote, but counted each slave as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of apportioning representation in Congress. This inflated the voting power of slaveholders and gave them much more influence in legislative matters than their actual numbers warranted. No American would knowingly tolerate such an arrangement today. But a glitch in the census that inflates the populations of some state legislative districts – thus exaggerating their voting power – has led to a contemporary version of that problem. It involves counting prison inmates in the district where they are confined rather than where they actually live. The Census Bureau could fix this problem in a heartbeat, so it needs to get a move on.

The culprit is a provision in the census that counts prison inmates as “residents” of the institutions where they are held, often for relatively short periods of time. Denied the right to vote in all but 2 of the 50 states, the inmates are nonetheless treated as voters when the State Legislatures draw up legislative districts. This practice mattered little 30 years ago, when the prison population was tiny. But with about 1.4 million people in prison today, it can be used to shift political power from one part of the state to another.

A startling analysis by Peter Wagner of the Prison Policy Initiative found original text hereseven upstate New York Senate districts meeting the population requirements only because inmates were included in the count.original text here The Republican Party in New York relies on its large upstate delegation for its majority in the State Senate – and for its political power statewide. New York is not alone. The Prison Policy Initiative’s researchers found 21 counties nationally where at least 21 percent of so-called residents lived behind bars.

By counting these nonvoting inmates as residents, the prison counties offend the principle of one person one vote, while siphoning off political power from the home districts to which the inmates will return as soon as they are released. Since inmates are jobless, their presence also allows prison districts to lower their per capita incomes, unfairly increasing their share of federal funds earmarked for the poor. Congress, which has just caught on to this, recently gave the Census Bureau 90 days to file a report on the feasibility of counting inmates at their homes of record rather than in prison. At the same time, a committee overseen by the National Academy of Sciences has been studying the residency issue and is expected to make its final report this spring. But why does the bureau need another study to decide whether it wants to uphold the one-person-one-vote principle? The bureau should get to work immediately on procedures that would allow it to count inmates where they actually live – and get those procedures locked in place by the 2010 census.

Financial burden of how prisoners counted in Census falls on rural — not urban — communities

Article explaining that the prisoner miscount distorts how rural counties distribute their own funds, but does not affect state distributions.

by Peter Wagner, December 8, 2005

Census 2000 found one out of every 200 residents of New York City in an upstate prison and counted them as if that was their actual residence. I have written extensively on this site about how this relatively small population transfer is magnified through the redistricting process to radically change the balance of power in New York in violation of the state and federal constitutions.

The impact of Census counts of incarcerated people on funding streams for local governments is far smaller than the political impact, but it is worth exploring how funding is affected and who gains and who loses funding from the practice. In contrast to the political effects, the transfer of 0.5% of New York City’s population upstate is, when dropped in the giant ocean that is the budget processes of the federal, state and local governments, a tiny ripple that disappears long before reaching the shore.

These budget processes are not commonly understood, and the resulting confusion impairs an honest debate about reforming the Census Bureau’s method of counting incarcerated people.

This article will make two critical points:

1. The way the Census counts prisoners does not significantly reduce the funding available to the urban communities where most prisoners come from.
2. The financial Census benefit to prison towns comes not from the places that prisoners come from but at the expense of other rural communities without prisons.

Phantom Constituents in the Census — New York Times Editorial

by Peter Wagner, September 26, 2005

New York Times Editorial, September 26, 2005

A longstanding quirk in census rules counts incarcerated people as “residents” of the prisons where most are held for only a short time, instead of counting them in the towns and cities where they actually live. This practice was scarcely noticeable 30 years ago, when the prison population was insignificant. But with 1.4 million people in prison today, this padding of electoral districts’ population figures shifts political power from the densely populated urban areas where most inmates live to the less populated rural districts where prisons are often built.

In 48 of 50 states the inmates cannot vote anyway. But they still count as constituents when state legislators sit down to draw up legislative districts. This bogus inflation gives prison districts undeserved strength in the state legislature and more influence than they would otherwise have in state affairs. Indeed, many legislative districts actually contain far too few people to be legal districts at all when the nonvoting inmates are subtracted. In some places, the phantom constituents account for more than 20 percent of the population count.

This arrangement has an unfortunate resemblance to early America under slavery, when slaves were barred from the polls but counted as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of apportioning representation in Congress. In addition, legislators from the rural prison counties often use this purloined power to vote against the interests of the urban communities from which prison inmates most typically come. By counting impoverished inmates as citizens, the prison counties also reap more than a fair share of federal dollars that are earmarked for the poor.

Several experts, including a former director of the census, have suggested that the bureau count inmates at their preprison residences. A panel reviewing residency issues in general has heard compelling testimony that should drive it to the same conclusion. And instead of waiting until the next census in 2010, the Census Bureau should simply change its procedures now. Counting inmates where they live would cure what has clearly become a troubling flaw in the census process.

Census treatment of incarcerated felons unfairly dilutes voting strength of non-prison communities

by Peter Wagner, June 22, 2005

NEWS RELEASE JUNE 22, 2005 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT:Brenda Wright, National Voting Rights Institute (617) 624-3900, ext. 13
Peter Wagner, Prison Policy Initiative

Today, the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is hearing arguments in two cases alleging that New York’s felon disenfranchisement laws violate the Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution (Muntaqim v. Coombe and Hayden v. Pataki). The National Voting Rights Institute and the Prison Policy Initiative have filed an amicus brief with the Court arguing that the Court should consider the redistricting implications of disenfranchisement as part of the “totality of circumstances” which must be examined under the Voting Rights Act. The brief highlights the New York State legislature’s racially discriminatory redistricting practice of crediting rural white counties with additional population based on the presence of disenfranchised prisoners in upstate prisons.

Census counts of prisoners distort decision making on crime policy

by Peter Wagner, June 1, 2005

The American system of democracy distributes political power to the people by the means of legislative districts, which are redrawn after the Census each decade to ensure that each district contains the same number of people. When these district lines are fairly drawn around different “communities of interest”, the system works quite well at allowing the citizenry to exert political power in proportion to their numbers. But the discussion over how to best draw the lines breaks down when the underlying Census data does not reflect the actual populations of our communities.

The Census Bureau counts disenfranchised prisoners as if they were residents of the places where they are temporarily and involuntarily incarcerated. One of the most visible impacts on the political process is in New York’s 59th Senate District represented by Senator Dale Volker. Senator Volker claims his stance as the state’s staunchest defender of the draconian Rockefeller drug laws is in the interests of his constituents. But in 2001, only 3 people were sentenced to state prison for drug offenses from Senator Volker’s home Wyoming County. Even when I compensated for the huge population difference between New York City and Wyoming County, I found that New York City residents were 8 times as likely to be sent to prison for drug offenses in 2001 than residents in Wyoming County.