Site Network: Prison Policy Initiative | Prisoners of the Census

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New York

Counting 44,000 mostly Black and Latino residents of New York City as residents of upstate prison towns has had a staggering impact on democracy in New York, at both the state, and county levels. Most of the state’s prisoners (66%) are New York City residents, but the vast majority of them (91%) are counted as residents of upstate prisons. This miscount of incarcerated people misrepresents New York State’s demographic makeup and skews its system of legislative representation. It is too late for the Census Bureau to change where it counts people in prison, but a growing campaign seeks to eliminate prison-based gerrymandering by changing how the state and counties use the Census data.

graphic showing that many New York City residents are credited to upstate prisons

Animation by Adell Donaghue Design

In New York State one out of every three people who moved to upstate New York in the 1990s actually “moved” into a newly constructed prison. The State bars people in prison from voting, but their presence in the Census boosts the population of the upstate districts whose legislators favor prison expansion. Without using prison populations as padding, seven state senate districts would have to be redrawn, causing line changes throughout the state.

The problem is even more serious in county government, where large prisons can dominate the comparatively small populations of county legislative and supervisory districts. For example, apportioning government on the basis of Census Bureau prison counts gives the Chair of the Livingston County Board of Supervisors more than twice as much political clout as the population of his town is entitled.

Pending legislation

There are identical bills pending in both chambers to collect the home addresses of incarcerated people, and to require the state and county governments to draw legislature districts on the basis of Census Bureau data corrected to count incarcerated people at their home addresses.

The bills:

An Act to amend the election law, in relation to the residential classification of certain incarcerated persons, February 3, 2009

New York area leaders

It’s impossible to include everyone who is working toward fair districting in New York, but if you are looking to get involved, these are some of the people and organizations you might want to contact:

Endorsements

Fact sheets

Additional reading