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| Will Doolittle: Change in inmate counting is only a start Will Doolittle’s new article in the Glens Falls Post-Star asks what prison-based gerrymandering can reveal about broader inequalities in the criminal.... Read more | Virginia bill against prison-based gerrymandering passes House unanimously HB 13, which would allow more counties to reject prison-based gerrymandering, passed unanimously in the Virginia House and now advances to the Senate. Read more | Prison law about fairness, not partisanship The Daily News recently published a letter to the editor by Peter Wagner explaining that the law ending prison-based gerrymandering in New York is about.... Read more |
Prison-based gerrymandering dilutes your vote
“There are many ways to hijack political power. One of them is to draw state or city legislative districts around large prisons — and pretend that the inmates are legitimate constituents.”—Brent Staples
Called prison-based gerrymandering, the practice finds its clearest example in Anamosa, Iowa where a large prison was almost an entire city council district. Council districts are supposed to contain the same number of people, but basing districts on non-voting non-resident prison populations gives a handful of residents the same political power as thousands of residents elsewhere in the city.
Prison Populations Create Complications at Redistricting Time
The January, 2012 issue of the Missouri Municipal Review includes Peter Wagner's article on how the Census Bureau's prison miscount creates problems for Missouri cities at redistricting time. Since the Census Bureau counts incarcerated people as they they were residents of the cities in which they are confined, city officials who are redrawing city council lines must decide whether the people who live next to the prison should be given more influence over city affairs than other residents.
Read more of the summary or jump right to the full article.
New York Times hails “An End to Prison Gerrymandering”
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 for bringing benefits to all and says it should be emulated around the country.
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Don't miss some of our recent reports:
50 State Guide to Fixing Prison-Based Gerrymandering by Peter Wagner, Aleks Kajstura, Elena Lavarreda, Christian de Ocejo, and Sheila Vennell O'Rourke, March 2010
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Preventing prison-based gerrymandering in redistricting: What to watch for
 by Peter Wagner and Brenda Wright, Prison Policy Initiative and Demos, February 23, 2011
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Meet us
- Feb 18, 2012: Peter Wagner will discuss prison-based gerrymandering on a Race & Voting panel at the RebLaw Conference at 11am at Yale Law School in New Haven CT.
- April 26-28, 2012: Peter Wagner will be speaking about prison-based gerrymandering at the A New Vision of Black Freedom: The Manning Marable Memorial Conference at Columbia Univ. in New York City. Exact day/time TBA.
Not near you? Invite Peter to your town.
