Take action at the local level
Use our Democracy Toolkit to determine if prison populations are distorting your access to county government.
Publicize your findings, like these sample letters to the editor on local impacts:
- Letter to the Tribune-Star in Terre Haute, Indiana about the fact that the city credited the federal prison population to City Council District 1, giving each group of 8 residents of District 1 as much political clout as 10 residents in other parts of the city.
- Letter to the Daily Freeman in Greene County, New York supporting citizens in the town of Athens who wished to remove the Coxsackie prisons from the data used to draw county legislative districts.