Census counts of prisoners shift population in California

by Peter Wagner, March 15, 2004 Link

Los Angeles County is 28% of the state of California, but it supplies 34% of the state’s prisoners. The political effect of this disproportionate incarceration is magnified by the fact that the Census Bureau counts prisoners where they are incarcerated, not where they are from. Few prisoners are incarcerated in Los Angeles County — the county contains only 3% of the California’s state prison cells.

The situation is reversed in prison-hosting regions like Kings County, a 3 hour drive to the north. Kings County’s reported population of 129,461 is greatly inflated by the inclusion as local residents of 17,262 state prisoners. This small county has 0.89% of California’s land mass and 0.33% of California’s non-incarcerated residents, yet it contains 12% of the state’s prisoners.

In order to accurately reflect our communities, the Census Bureau should update its methodology to count prisoners where they voluntarily reside: at home.

Upstate New York radio asks: Are state prisoners local residents?

by Peter Wagner, March 8, 2004 Link

David Sommerstein has a great piece on North Country Public Radio Prisoners: North Country Residents?. The piece was aired on March 5, the morning of Peter Wagner’s presentation at the Census Bureau symposium and discusses our Feb 16 Fact of the Week contrasting Franklin County’s exclusion of the prisoner population with St. Lawrence County’s decision to include the prison population to shore up underpopulated Republican districts in the county legislature.

You can listen to the program at the above link, or read a transcript we created.

Forty out of forty legislators agree: Prisoners incarcerated in my district are not really my constituents

by Peter Wagner, March 8, 2004 Link

PrisonersoftheCensus.org argues that prisoners are a part of the community where they originated and not the prison-hosting community. Home is where their social, political and cultural ties are. But do legislators look at it the same way?

Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman decided to find out:

“… I sent to all members of the lower house of the Indiana state legislature a brief survey that included the following question:

“Which inmate would you feel was more truly a part of your constituency?

“a) An inmate who is currently incarcerated in a prison located in your district, but has no other ties to your district.

“b) An inmate who is currently incarcerated in a prison in another district, but who lived in your district before being convicted and/or whose family still lives in your district.

“Every single one of the forty respondents who answered the question - regardless of their political party or the presence or absence of a prison in their district - chose answer (b). Had the responses been more ambiguous there might have been reason to repeat the survey with other groups of legislators. However, unless there is something highly anomalous about Indiana, it is quite clear that representatives do not consider inmates to be constituents of the districts in which they are incarcerated - unless, of course, they happen to have prior ties to those districts.”

Since everybody agrees that prisoners should be represented at home, the Census should count prisoners in the same place — at home.

Source: Counting Matters: Prison inmates, population bases, and “one person, one vote”, by Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman 11 Va. J. Soc. Pol’y & L. 229, 303. (Winter 2004)