Senator Schneiderman, the Prison Policy Initiative and Other Elected Officials and Advocates Call on Census to Count Prisoners in Their Home Communities

by Peter Wagner, October 18, 2007 Link

Announce National Letter-Writing Campaign to Urge Policy Change

For Immediate Release:
October 18, 2007
Contact: Michael Meade 646-522-8601
Peter Wagner 857-753-1132

Today, State Senator Eric Schneiderman, Peter Wagner, Executive Director of the Prison Policy Initiative, State Senators Eric Adams and Liz Krueger, Assemblymembers Adriano Espaillat, Micah Kellner, Keith Wright and Adam Clayton Powell, Council Members Robert Jackson, Miguel Martinez, and Melissa Mark Viverito and criminal justice and democracy advocates called on the United States Census Bureau to begin counting prisoners in their home communities, rather than where they are incarcerated. Elected officials and advocates also announced the beginning of a national letter-writing campaign by local elected officials in New York and around the country to urge a change in this policy.

“Counting prisoners as residents of the prison districts where they do not vote or otherwise participate in those communities is simply bad policy,” said State Senator Eric Schneiderman. “Disenfranchised people become an undeserved source of political power for legislators who benefit from locking up more people for longer sentences.”

“The Census Bureau’s insistence on counting prisoners as residents of rural counties creates big problems when counties like St. Lawrence go to draw county legislative districts. Because our county districts are so small, a single prison can have a huge negative impact on equal voting power,” said letter co-author Tedra L. Cobb, vice-Chair of the St. Lawrence County Board of Legislators.

Yesterday, federal, state, and local legislators presented a letter signed by 32 elected officials from New York, Texas, and Illinois to Charles Kincannon, Director of the Census Bureau, requesting that the agency collect the home addresses of all incarcerated persons in the next national decennial census and count them at those addresses. According to these officials, counting prisoners at their pre-incarceration address is essential for compliance with the “One Person, One Vote” rulings of the Supreme Court, which require that legislative districts at every level of government contain equal numbers of residents in order to ensure fair and equal representation for all.

“The Census Bureau considers redistricting to be the second most important use of its data and it wants to hear from the elected officials who use that data.” said Prison Policy Initiative Executive Director Peter Wagner. “I call upon all supporters of democracy to ask their own elected officials to join New York State Senator Eric Schneiderman and St. Lawrence County Legislator Tedra Cobb in their appeal to the Census Bureau.”

In addition to the Prison Policy Initiative, the elected officials were joined by criminal justice and democracy advocacy groups, including the Brennan Center for Justice, DEMOS, Citizens Against Recidivism, Coalition for Parole Restoration, Seven Neighborhoods Action Partnership, JusticeWorks Community, Center for NuLeadership on Urban Solutions, Community Service Society, The Correctional Association of New York, Families Rally for Emancipation and Empowerment (FREE!), and the Drug Policy Alliance.

Currently, the Census Bureau includes everyone housed in federal, state, and local prisons in its count of the general population of the Census block that contains the prison. New York State law, however, defines residence as the place where one voluntarily lives. Many states, including New York, also have constitutional clauses or election law statutes that explicitly declare that incarceration does not change a residence.

Unfortunately, the current Census methodology disregards this, instead counting a significant proportion of our national population in the wrong place. According to advocates, crediting the population of prisoners to the Census block where they are temporarily and involuntarily held creates electoral inequities at all levels of government.

“Every decade, states use federal census data to update their legislative district boundaries,” continued Mr. Wagner. “The goal is to ensure that each district contains the same population, as required by the federal constitution’s “one-person, one-vote” rule. The Census Bureau counts people in prison where their bodies are located on census day, not where they come from and where they will return, on average, 34 months later. The Bureau’s current practice made sense before prison populations became large enough to distort democracy. However, more people now live in prison than our three least populous states combined, and African Americans are imprisoned at 7 times the rate of whites. Today, this Census practice undermines the rule of law,” Peter Wagner explained.

“This is a fundamental question of equity,” said State Senator Liz Krueger. “The geographic communities where people who end up in our prisons come from are being underrepresented in Albany. As a result, once these prisoners have paid their dues to society and return home, they are not provided access to the community-based resources and services they need in order to move on with their lives and become productive citizens.”

“It’s only fair that we count prisoners from their last home address,” stated Adam Clayton Powell, IV. “In most cases, the prisoners will return shortly to their home address.”

“Counting prisoners, for census purposes, as members of the community where they are incarcerated has profound implications,” said Councilmember Robert Jackson. “I urge federal officials to review this mistaken policy, and to restore prisoners to the communities where they lived, have ties and to which they will return.”

“The ‘one person, one vote’ rulings of the Supreme Court are in direct contradiction with this policy,” said Councilmember Miguel Martinez. “Even though they may not recognize this in Washington, the Census Bureau policies have a real impact on my community and many other communities in New York City.”

“Counting prisoners as ‘residents’ of upstate districts instead of their home communities distorts representation in the legislature and violates the principle of one-person, one-vote,” said Brenda Wright, Legal Director of the Democracy Program at Demos.

Senator Schneiderman has introduced legislation in the Senate (S1934), which would bring the state’s practice into compliance with the state constitution. The bill, sponsored by Assemblymember Espaillat in the Assembly, would require New York to correct the inaccurate population data that results from the Census Bureau’s practice of counting prisoners as residents of prison communities. Thirteen counties in New York State already correct the data, but many other counties are unaware of the democratic distortion or the fact that they are permitted to alter Census data.

“If passed, the legislation that I’m sponsoring in the Assembly and Senator Schneiderman is sponsoring in the Senate would fix the inequity that is perpetuated by our current policy,” said Assemblymember Adriano Espaillat. “By counting prisoners in the places where they are incarcerated, the Census Bureau is effectively shortchanging my constituents from receiving fair representation.”

According to the Prison Policy Initiative report, Importing Constituents: Prisoners and Political Clout in New York, seven New York state senatorial districts met minimum population size requirements only because they included large prisons in the population total. The actual voting residents in these seven districts have inequitably inflated voting power relative to the inhabitants of the rest of the state.

“Not surprisingly, politicians whose jobs depend on packed prisons are often the strongest supporters of the mandatory minimums and harsh drug laws that have kept prisons full and devastated urban communities,” said Senator Schneiderman. “In the meantime, the voting power of the people in the largely poor and minority communities those prisoners come from is diluted, making it more difficult for those communities to advocate for the resources and services all everyone needs to better their lives and end the cycle of poverty and crime.”

As part of this ongoing campaign, elected officials and advocates pledged to continue recruiting elected officials from across the country to request this policy change from the Federal Census Bureau. In the meantime, if the Census refuses to change its policy, elected officials vowed to continue pushing for a remedy in New York State.

The letter is available at http://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/letter/

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Phantom Voters in New York — New York Times editorial

by New York Times, July 23, 2007 Link

Prison-based gerrymandering is especially egregious in New York, where prison inmates — who are denied the right to vote — are routinely counted as “residents” to pad out legislative districts. This practice falsely inflates the political power of districts with prisons, while undercutting districts with larger voting populations.

State senators who owe their seats to prison gerrymandering defend it tooth and nail. But a new study from the New York-based research group Prison Policy Initiative, entitled “Phantom Constituents in the Empire State,” found that 13 counties have excluded inmates from the local redistricting count because they thought it unfairly stacked the political deck. Some of the counties came to that conclusion after learning that imprisoned people would have made up 30 percent or more of proposed county legislative districts.

The Board of Supervisors for Essex County got it right when it wrote that counting prison inmates as residents unfairly diluted the voting weight of the county’s actual residents, especially since inmates “live in a separate environment, do not participate in the life of Essex County, and do not affect the social and economic character of the towns.”

The study found 16 counties where inmates were still counted as residents for redistricting purposes. But that is likely to change as citizens learn that districts with prisons are wielding undeserved influence in county affairs. The same thing needs to happen in the New York State Legislature.

Prisoners in the Census skew county government in New York

by Peter Wagner, July 18, 2007 Link

Contact: Peter Wagner, 413/527-1333

July 18 - The federal Census counts state and federal prisoners as part of the local population, and that creates big problems for county government, charges a new report by the Prison Policy Initiative. The report explains that the Census Bureau wants New York county governments to use its data but counts prisoners as residents of the prison location, which violates the New York State Constitution. Counting prisoners as residents, despite the fact that they can’t vote or participate in the communities where they are incarcerated, leads to unequal distributions of political power.

“This Census glitch creates big problems for counties,” says report lead author Peter Wagner, the Executive Director of the non-profit Prison Policy Initiative. “New York counties with prisons are faced with a tough choice: adjust the data, or rely on the Census and draw unfair districts based on faulty numbers.”

The report, Phantom constituents in the Empire State: How outdated Census Bureau methodology burdens New York counties, examines how the 31 New York counties with prisons handle the flawed data, commending 13 counties that adjust the census to prevent equal representation from being damaged. The report is the first to analyze local governments’ response to the inaccurate Census data and to measure the dilution of voting power within each county in the state.

The Prison Policy Initiative identified 15 counties, plus New York City, that rely on census counts of prison populations when they draw lines for county legislative districts or weight the votes for county boards of supervisors. The report finds five counties - Chautauqua, Livingston, Oneida, Madison, and St. Lawrence - where relying on faulty Census data created districts that were at least 20% prisoners. In such a district, every group of 8 residents has the same voting power as 10 residents in other districts. Some counties have even larger vote dilution problems. For example, 62% of the people counted by the Census in Groveland are incarcerated, giving every group of 4 residents in Groveland the same say over county affairs as 10 residents elsewhere in the county.

Essex County, one of the counties excluding prisoners during redistricting, has declared that prisoners “live in a separate environment, do not participate in the life of Essex County, and do not affect the social and economic character of the towns” where they are incarcerated, and therefore should not be counted as residents.

“How the Census counts people in prison is a rarely-noticed problem,” said Wagner, “but it’s important that the public know how the Census is diluting their votes.” The authors are optimistic that change is possible, suggesting several reforms, including the Census Bureau reforming its methodology or individual counties adjusting Census data before redistricting. Wagner explained, “With only one exception nationwide, every time a community learns that prison populations are distorting their access to local government, the legislature has reversed course and redrawn districts based on actual population, not the Census Bureau’s mistakes.”

The report, Phantom constituents in the Empire State: How outdated Census Bureau methodology burdens New York counties, is available at http://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/nycounties.