Latest news | ||
| New Jersey bill to end prison-based gerrymandering passes first step New Jersey bill to end prison-based gerrymandering (SB 1055) passed the Senate's Committee on State Government, Wagering, Tourism & Historic Preservation. Read more | Last chance to vote for Peter Wagner to receive the Maria Leavey Tribute Award! Please vote for Peter Wagner to receive the Maria Leavey Award to honor his decade of work to end prison-based gerrymandering. Read more | Prison-based gerrymandering is over in Terre Haute, Indiana City Council votes unanimously to exclude the prison population for redistricting purposes. Read more |
Is prison-based gerrymandering new to you?
Welcome! We wrote our introduction to the site and its contents just for you.
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.
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 [En Español]
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