Site Network: Prison Policy Initiative | Prisoners of the Census

The impact on local democracy

Rural residents who live in the same community as a prison, but not in its district, have their voting power severely diluted. Many communities across the nation have taken the initiative to correct the problem themselves by manually correcting flawed Census data. Four states (Colorado, Mississippi, New Jersey and Virginia) encourage or even require local governments to exclude prison populations during redistricting.

The best introduction to the impact of the prison miscount on local government is a letter that three residents of rural Franklin County, New York, sent to the Census Bureau in 2004.

We've identified prison-based gerrymandering within counties, cities and towns, and even one school district:

Counties

Cities and Towns

School district:

* These jurisdictions currently don't have prison-based gerrymandering problems, often because the prison is newer than the districts, but unless action is taken now they are likely to have prison-based gerrymandering problems in the next round of redistricting.

If the town or city you are interested in does not appear on the above lists, it may be on our list of places that draw fair districts by excluding the prison population. You can also use the step-by-step guide in our Democracy Toolkit to look for prison-based gerrymandering yourself.

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