February 14, 2013

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: FEBRUARY 14, 2013

Contact:
Leah Sakala, Prison Policy Initiative, (413) 527-0845
Lauren Strayer, Dēmos, Lauren Strayer, (212) 389-1413

Easthampton, MA – Today, more than 200 civil rights, voting rights and criminal justice organizations sent a letter calling on the U.S. Census Bureau to seize a timely opportunity to research alternative ways to count incarcerated people in the decennial Census.

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The letter expresses a national concern that the Bureau’s method of counting incarcerated people at prison locations, rather than in their home communities, leads to an unequal distribution of political power in state and local governments known as “prison gerrymandering.” The letter explains that incarcerated people are not considered residents of prisons for other purposes, but the Census Bureau’s method “concentrates a population that is disproportionately male, urban, and African-American or Latino in approximately 1,500 federal and state prisons that are far from their home communities.” The 210 organizations wrote, “We are concerned that the Census Bureau’s tabulation procedures distort the redistricting process, giving extra political influence to people who live near prisons while diluting the votes of residents in every other legislative district.”

Although the 2020 Census is seven years away, the Census Bureau is already deep in the planning process. The letter calls on the Bureau to pave the way for a national end to prison gerrymandering in 2020 by prioritizing research on how to count incarcerated people at home in the next census. “In order to develop the best possible methodology for fixing prison gerrymandering, the Census Bureau needs to address this research question now,” said Brenda Wright, Vice President of Legal Strategies at Dēmos.

The letter charges that “…Failing to count incarcerated people at home for redistricting purposes undermines the constitutional guarantee of ‘one person, one vote’, with critical implications for the health of our democracy.” For that reason, the organizations note, four states and more than 200 counties and municipalities have made their own adjustments to Census Bureau data in order to avoid prison gerrymandering. But while state and local governments are increasingly devising their own solutions, many face unique constraints and only the Census Bureau can implement a comprehensive and standardized national solution.

The letter credits the Census Bureau with recognizing that prison gerrymandering causes significant problems for state and local redistricting. Specifically, the Bureau began to address the problem by releasing 2010 Census data on prison populations ahead of schedule in order to allow state and local governments to adjust their redistricting data to avoid prison gerrymandering. “The Bureau has made great progress towards enabling state and local governments to find creative solutions to prison gerrymandering,” said Peter Wagner, Executive Director of the Prison Policy Initiative, “and now the Bureau must use the current planning period to ensure that the 2010 Census is the last one to tabulate two million incarcerated people outside their home communities.“

The full text of the letter, including a list of signers, is available at http://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/letters/feb2013.html.

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by Aleks Kajstura, January 30, 2013

The census’s practice of counting incarcerated people at the location of the facility where they are incarcerated, rather than at their home addresses, continues to test Virginia’s redistricting laws, but the state keeps making progress towards a solution. A new bill to end the state’s requirement that some counties and cities engage in prison gerrymandering, HB 1339, just passed the House and is making its way through the Senate.


Historically, Virginia law required counties and cities to base their legislative districts on unadjusted federal census data, denying local governments in Virginia the flexibility exercised by governments in other states to choose the population base used for redistricting. This caused some counties’ districts to be distorted by the way prison populations are counted in the census, resulting in prison gerrymandering. Over 200 counties and municipalities across the nation avoid prison gerrymandering by adjusting census data to account for the prison populations.

In 2001, Virginia took its first step in amending the law to give counties where incarcerated people make up more than 12% of the census population the option to avoid padding Board of Supervisors districts with prison populations.

Unfortunately, the 2001 law’s escape valve did not apply to enough local governments. For example, Southampton County’s prison population was too small to benefit from the 2001 law, because the county was forced to draw a district that was more than half incarcerated. This gave the residents of the district with the prison more than twice the political influence of the residents of all other districts in the county.

Last year the law was amended yet again to allow more counties and cities to avoid prison gerrymandering. The law now allows any county, city, or town where a single district would be more than 12% incarcerated to exclude prison populations from its redistricting data.

HB 1339, now in the Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections, proposes to allow any county, city, or town, regardless of size, to exclude populations of correctional facilities for redistricting purposes. Virginia’s long struggle with the Census Bureau’s prisoner miscount underscores the importance of a comprehensive national solution at the Census Bureau by 2020.

by Leah Sakala, January 9, 2013

Yesterday the Valley Advocate ran a great overview of the Massachusetts Special Joint Committee on Redistricting’s wrap-up report on the process of redrawing the Massachusetts district lines. As the article points out, the Committee found that prison gerrymandering presented a significant problem in the past redistricting cycle:

PPI has led the campaign to fix the problem, producing numerous reports showing the resulting political disparities in districts across the country. PPI also brought the matter to the attention of Massachusetts’ redistricting committee, whose report referred to the “tremendous amount of testimony and advice” it received on the issue. “We agree that the way prisoners are currently counted does a disservice to the state and should be changed,” the authors wrote.

The best solution, the report concludes, is for the Census Bureau to solve the problem nationwide by 2020:

The “most expedient and streamlined” fix [...] would be for Congress to call on the Census Bureau to change its policy on counting prisoners. “The tabulation of prisoners should be at the forefront of Bureau priorities in evaluating and adjusting how the 2020 U.S. Census will be conducted,” said the report, which also recommended that the Legislature pass a resolution expressing its support of such a change—and take more dramatic action if necessary. “If the federal government fails to act, then the only recourse is to amend the Massachusetts Constitution,” the report said. “Such a change on the federal level, however, will rectify the perceived inequalities in counting prisoners and eliminate costly litigation for states to defend redistricting plans based on adjusting prison populations.”

I also talked about this great progress towards a Massachusetts resolution against prison gerrymandering with WHMP‘s Bill Newman last week as a guest on his show. Give it a listen, and stay tuned for the resolution to be announced!

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by Peter Wagner, December 21, 2012

It’s happening! The national movement to end prison-based gerrymandering took huge strides forward in 2012. Some of the victories were easy to see, like in June when the Supreme Court upheld Maryland’s first-in-the-nation law that did what the Census Bureau had refused to do: count incarcerated people as residents of their homes for redistricting purposes.

Other victories were more subtle, like when the Maryland victory this summer finally energized the editorial boards of the Hartford Courant and the Norwich Bulletin to criticize the Connecticut legislature for twice failing to pass the bill to end prison-based gerrymandering, and to demand that the legislature pass it in the next session.

And flying under the national radar are the more than 200 rural counties and cities that have taken a stand against prison-based gerrymandering when drawing county and municipal districts. Impediments to further reform are falling quickly. For example, this year the Virginia legislature unanimously changed state law to give more counties in that state the option to avoid prison-based gerrymandering.

A decade ago, the problem of prison-based gerrymandering was almost entirely hidden. Today, thanks to your support, we’ve put the problem – and the solutions — squarely on the national agenda. Your moral encouragement and financial investment has helped to build my law school project into a national movement that is permanently improving how our democracy works. The research and the outreach you helped fund has enabled us to build a network of hundreds of organizational allies and elected officials across the country, and has won us the ear of the Census Bureau.

As I describe in my Washington Post op-ed, the next Census in 2020 sounds far away, but the key planning is underway now. Together, our movement is making sure that the handful of legislative districts with prisons will no longer be able to dominate the political process.

Our research and advocacy – and this blog – is at the center of this national movement. Our support comes from two foundations and a small network of individual donors. Can you join those donors in making a tax-deductible contribution to support our work today? Thank you for being part of this movement!

by Drew Kukorowski, December 19, 2012

Editor’s note: Drew prepared this article shortly before he wrapped up his work with us last week. We’re grateful for the huge contributions he made! -Leah Sakala

Here at Prison Policy Initiative we’re always trying to think of better ways to explain the problem of prison gerrymandering to folks who may not have heard about it before. Prison gerrymandering is the practice of counting incarcerated people as residents of the prisons that detain them, and then using those numbers when election districts are redrawn in order to comply with the Supreme Court’s one person-one vote requirement.

When I first heard about this “miscount,” I wasn’t sure exactly who was harmed by it. Normally, we think that living next door to a prison is undesirable; in this situation, though, living next door to the prison is highly beneficial. That’s because the votes of people who live next door to a prison carry more weight than the votes of people who live in non-prison districts. I’m from North Carolina, and there’s a great example of this problem back home that helped me understand the harm caused by prison gerrymandering.

There’s only one federal prison in North Carolina. But it’s a big one — FCI Butner just north of Durham in Granville County. In 2010, the Census counted about 4,500 people as residents of the Butner prison complex. But none of those incarcerated people can vote, and the vast majority don’t come from North Carolina, much less from Granville County (e.g., Bernie Madoff). Nonetheless, the Census counts them as residents of Granville County, and the county used those numbers to balance their county commissioner and school board districts during the last round of redistricting.

In the example I found, the people who live near the federal prison in Granville County get twice as much political influence as people who don’t. The Granville County commissioner and school board district — District 3 — with the big federal prison complex is about 50% incarcerated (52.5% to be exact). This is a huge benefit to the actual residents of District 3, but harms the residents of every other district in the county. That’s because the commissioner and school board member from the prison district only have to serve about 4,000 actual constituents. In all the other districts in the county, though, the commissioners and school board members each serve about 8,500 constituents. This means that you have less access to your elected representatives if you don’t live in the prison district. Or to put it another way, every 47 residents of the prison district have as much political power as 100 residents in other districts.

Smaller but still important is the effect of prison gerrymandering on state representative and senatorial districts. Newly drawn NC House District 2 is about 6.7% incarcerated if you take into account the federal and state prisons in Butner (there’s a state prison across the street from the federal prison that has about 1,000 inmates). And the new NC Senate District 20 is about 3% incarcerated. Again, the residents of those districts have more access to their state representatives because those representatives don’t have as many real constituents to serve as the representatives from districts without prisons.

While Granville County didn’t address its prison gerrymandering problem this time around, maybe it will in 2020. After all, there are more than 200 counties and cities around the country with prisons that decided not to use the prison populations when redrawing their district lines. To be fair, Granville County is required to submit its redistricting changes to the U.S. Department of Justice under the Voting Rights Act, and it was concerned that removing its prison population might raise a red flag with the U.S. Department of Justice. But of the 200 counties and cities that avoided prison gerrymandering, about 90 were required to have their plans approved by the U.S. Department of Justice, and all received that approval. Or maybe the North Carolina General Assembly will pass legislation – like Maryland and New York, have – mandating that state and local governments draw election districts based on their real populations. Maybe if Mr. Madoff runs for that school board seat then Granville County will realize that it’s absurd to count prisoners as local residents.

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by Peter Wagner, December 12, 2012

Report from the Chairs of the Special Joint Committee on Redistricting

The Co-Chairs of the Massachusetts Special Joint Committee on Redistricting today issued a report reviewing their accomplishments and their recommendations on issues they discovered while redrawing the Massachusetts district lines.

Senate Chair Stanley Rosenberg and House Chair Michael J. Moran devote about a quarter of their report to reviewing the vote dilution caused by the Census Bureau’s decision to tabulate incarcerated people as residents of the prison location instead of at their legal home addresses. The current system, the report observes, “inflates the relative strength of votes by residents in that district [containing a prison] at the expense of voters in all other districts in the Commonwealth.”

The co-chairs discuss the unique requirements of the Massachusetts constitution, noting that it would be theoretically possible to propose a constitutional amendment that would allow the state to end prison gerrymandering by state legislation. They conclude, however, that the “most expedient and streamlined avenue” towards a solution is for the Census Bureau to tabulate incarcerated people at their home addresses. Action at the Census Bureau would ensure a “systematic and consistent tabulation approach” that would relieve legislatures of the burden of each adjusting their own redistricting data.

The message is clear:

“The tabulation of prisoners should be at the forefront of Bureau priorities in evaluating and adjusting how the 2020 U.S. Census will be conducted.”

“We agree that the way prisoners are currently counted does a disservice to the state and should be changed.”

But the co-chairs did not intend the report to be the final word on the matter. The very first recommendation in the report is a call for the Massachusetts legislature to:

“Pass a resolution by the General Court requesting that the U.S. Census Bureau change the residency classification for counting prisoners at their legal residence prior to incarceration. The Legislature could consider a constitutional amendment in the event the federal government does not act on our recommendations.”

For more information, see:

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by Peter Wagner, December 7, 2012

The movement to end prison gerrymandering had its best year ever in 2012. Can you help us keep the momentum up in 2013?

Our biggest victory was widely-publicized when the Supreme Court upheld Maryland’s first-in-the-nation law ending prison gerrymandering. We won a quieter victory when the Virginia legislature unanimously changed state law to give more counties in that state the option to avoid prison gerrymandering. And you saw in last week’s newsletter that more than 200 rural counties and municipalities have responded to the call to end prison gerrymandering in their own districts.

Our research and advocacy – and this newsletter – is at the center of this national movement. Our support comes from two foundations and a small network of individual donors. Can you join those donors in making a tax-deductible contribution to support our work today? Thank you for being part of this movement!

by Aleks Kajstura, November 27, 2012

Peter Wagner, our executive director, is in Kentucky today testifying about BR 219, a bill to end prison gerrymandering, before the Kentucky General Assembly Task Force on Elections, Constitutional Amendments, and Intergovernmental Affairs. In addition to explaining how prison populations in redistricting data distort state legislative districts, Peter will highlight how Kentucky counties grapple with prison gerrymandering when drawing their magisterial districts. For more information about prison gerrymandering in Kentucky and how you can get involved, check out our Kentucky campaign page.

by Leah Sakala, November 26, 2012

How do officials in cities or counties that contain large prisons draw their electoral districts? Do they accept Census Bureau data that inflates the population of the area containing the prison, or do they reject the Census Bureau’s prison counts in order to draw fair districts?

We’ve been reaching out to cities and counties across the country, first to bring the problem of prison-based gerrymandering — and the solutions — to their attention, and then more recently following up to see what they did. We’re happy to report that we’ve found that most of these cities and counties exclude the prison populations in order to give all of their actual residents the same access to government.

Just the other day, we hit a big milestone in the project when we verified the 200th county or city to refuse to engage in prison-based gerrymandering: Prison Policy Initiative Legal Director Aleks Kajstura found that Howard County, Texas refused to use the 5,000+ people in private and federal prisons when drawing its new County Commissioner precincts. Had county officials engaged in prison-based gerrymandering, the First Precinct would have been more than 60% incarcerated, giving every four residents of that precinct the same influence as ten residents in any other parts of the county.

This milestone in our research is further evidence that the national trend away from prison-based gerrymandering is gaining momentum. And even more exciting is the fact that 200 is a significant underestimate of the number of local governments that avoid prison-based gerrymandering. We know that the actual number is much higher, in part because we’re still calling counties and because redistricting is not yet complete in some locations, but especially because we’ve largely skipped following up in states that require counties and municipalities to exclude prison populations. Instead, we’ve focused on the places that must independently choose whether or not to avoid prison-based gerrymandering. And there, the trend is clear: prison-based gerrymandering is on the decline.

To celebrate reaching 200, we’ve updated our map of national progress towards ending prison-based gerrymandering:

map showing state and local government that are taking action to end prison-based gerrymandering

These 200+ communities deserve the credit for finding creative solutions to the unexpected problems caused by the Census Bureau’s archaic method of tabulating incarcerated people. Unfortunately, often unknowingly, many other communities used census counts of prison populations to dilute the votes of most of their own residents. Hopefully the Census Bureau will update its methodology and present the country with a national solution by counting incarcerated people at home in 2020.

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by Leah Sakala, November 2, 2012

City of Lima redistricting plan excluding the prison

As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve been keeping close tabs recently on the presidential candidates’ travel itineraries. As they jet around the country to drum up votes in Tuesday’s election, they keep making campaign stops in cities and counties where prison-based gerrymandering presents a major democratic challenge.

This afternoon, President Obama will be speaking to a crowd of voters in Lima, Ohio. While the president is hoping for a victory in Ohio on Tuesday, Lima residents have already won a democratic victory of their own over the problem of prison-based gerrymandering. For more than two decades, officials in the City of Lima have refused to pad their city wards with the populations of the two state prisons located within city limits.

As Board of Elections Director Keith Cunningham explained, the decision to exclude incarceration populations makes sense because “prisoners have no communications, no voting rights, and are not a constituency.” If city officials had not adjusted the 2010 Census data by removing the prison populations for redistricting purposes, about half of the population in Ward 1 would have been made up of people in the state prisons. By avoiding prison-based gerrymandering, the city ensured that the actual residents of Ward 1 were not granted twice the voting power of any resident in the other six districts.

So, although Obama may not mention prison-based gerrymandering this afternoon, the City of Lima has a strong history of maintaining a healthy democracy. And on Tuesday, Lima voters will have the opportunity to exercise it again.

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