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The Census' prisoner miscount distorts democracy

The Census Bureau counts prisoners as if they lived voluntarily in the communities where they are incarcerated. And though most states bar prisoners from voting, the inaccurate census figures allow state lawmakers to pad district populations when drawing legislative maps. This creates prison districts with disproportionate voting power and drains political influence from the urban districts where most prisoners live.

Increasingly rural Illinois prisons dilute Chicago’s political power

by Peter Wagner, December 29, 2003

New prisons in Illinois are being built further and further from urban Chicago, home to 59% of the state’s prisoners. Prior to 1980, the average prison was 160 miles from the city. Prisons built in the 1980s were an average of almost 220 miles and prisons built in the last decade averaged 260 miles from Chicago.

Because the Census counted 45,000 Illinois prisoners not at home but in their rural prison cells, political power is flowing out of Chicago into increasingly more distant prison towns.

Sources:

Peter Wagner, Funds don’t belong in Washington Park [Illinois] St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 24, 2003.

IL DOC Statistics

Paul Street, and Dennis Kass, The Color and Geography of Prison Growth in Illinois [PDF],. Chicago Urban League, page 2.

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