Help End Prison Gerrymandering Prison gerrymandering funnels political power away from urban communities to legislators who have prisons in their (often white, rural) districts. More than two decades ago, the Prison Policy Initiative put numbers on the problem and sparked the movement to end prison gerrymandering.
Everyone is supposed to have an equal voice in their government’s decisions, but an outdated and misguided Census Bureau policy that counts incarcerated people in the wrong place gives a few residents of each state a megaphone. It is a problem known as prison gerrymandering, and state lawmakers can fix it. In fact, nearly half of the US population now lives in a place that has addressed prison gerrymandering, but many states have failed to act.
Prison gerrymandering impacts states differently, all in significant ways
Prison gerrymandering skews representation in all 14 states in the reports series, but the impact can look different across different states:
Five of the states – Kansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, West Virginia, and Wyoming – have state legislative districts where prison populations account for over 10% of a district. That means 90 people who live in one of those districts are given as much political clout as 100 residents living elsewhere in the state.
The realities of prison gerrymandering often run counter to common assumptions. For example, in North Carolina, prison gerrymandering disproportionately hurts rural residents. The state’s rural counties account for 35% of the state’s population, but 40% of people incarcerated in North Carolina come from rural counties. Prison gerrymandering shifts populations away from most rural communities in the state and concentrates power in the few areas that have amassed the largest prisons.
In other states, prison gerrymandering problems can be less obvious. For example, Oregon is one of a few states that draw their districts so evenly that the population of the smallest and largest districts is less than 1% away from exact equality, but prison gerrymandering creates seven districts that fail to meet Oregon’s exacting standards for population equality.
Prison gerrymandering disproportionately harms Black, Native, and Latino residents
Across the 14 states, prison gerrymandering reduces the political power of nearly all residents by allowing a few districts with large correctional facilities to claim residents from all over the state. It also harms Black, Native, and Latino people — who are incarcerated at disproportionately high rates — in particular by enshrining the racial inequities of mass incarceration into the states’ legislative districts.
In Wyoming, for example, 80% of Black people, and 56% of Native people counted in State House District 2, were in correctional facilities that district.
Counting incarcerated people in the wrong place adds up. In the two most prison-gerrymandered districts in Texas alone over 13,000 Black people were counted in the wrong place. States that engage in prison gerrymandering effectively silence the voices of a large portion of their Black, Native, and Latino residents.
Impacted local governments are already tackling prison gerrymandering on their own
The impact of prison gerrymandering is most clearly visible at the small scale: county and city governments
With smaller districts at the local government level, even a single facility can dramatically distort political representation.
In North Carolina, for example, the City of Lumberton has a City Council district where incarcerated people account for 47% of the district’s population. The result is that 53 people in that district have the same power as 100 people in the other seven city council districts.
Similarly, when Clay County in Kentucky drew its Fiscal Court Magistrate (county) districts, it included people incarcerated in a federal facility as if they were residents of the county. As a result, 55 people in that county district were given the same political power as 100 people in every other Clay County government district.
Given that prison gerrymandering has such a massive impact on local government districts, it’s no surprise that a record number of city councils and county commissions tackled the problem after the 2020 Census. Among the 14 states we examined, local governments in Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and North Carolina are leading the way on ending prison gerrymandering, even when states have failed to act.
In states across the country, local governments have found that adjusting redistricting data to avoid prison gerrymandering is quite easy. However, the states can and should provide a more efficient and complete solution for their local governments.
The patchwork of prison gerrymandering reform spans rural, urban, and partisan divides
Over the course of the last few decades, over 200 local governments and a growing number of states have implemented policies on their own to fix this problem. Now roughly half of all U.S. residents now live in a city, county, or state that has ended prison gerrymandering, representing rural, urban, blue, red, and purple parts of the country.
Local governments that reject prison gerrymandering are mostly in rural counties (where the prisons are located). And states that have ended prison gerrymandering include deep “blue” states like California, “purple” states like Maine and Pennsylvania, and deep “red” states like Montana — where prison gerrymandering-reform legislation received wide bipartisan support.
More states need to join the growing movement to end prison gerrymandering
Adjusting redistricting data to avoid prison gerrymandering is now a well-tested strategy with a proven track record. In fact, the bipartisan National Conference of State Legislatures called this effort “the fastest-growing trend in redistricting.” States can now confidently pass legislation to count incarcerated people at home for redistricting purposes. Over a dozen states have already been successful in these efforts, paving the way for the 14 states in our reports series to follow in their footsteps.
2030 may seem far away, but other states have learned that the earlier that reforms are put in place, the less expensive, easier to produce, and more accurate the final redistricting data becomes. In fact, several states that passed prison gerrymandering reforms in past decades – California, Illinois, and Nevada – have continued to improve the process, taking advantage of the early part of the decade to update their data gathering procedures, leaving them ready well ahead of Census time.
Every state has a different approach to ending prison gerrymandering, but as a practical matter, this model bill, prepared by a coalition of civil rights, voting rights, and criminal justice organizations, is a great place to start. It provides clear guidance on how this data should be collected, by whom, and how it will be used for the redistricting process.
The Census Bureau is unlikely to change its policies about how to count incarcerated people in time for the 2030 Census, meaning that unless states act quickly, they will once again be driven into prison-gerrymandering their legislative districts.
Everyone in Georgia is supposed to have an equal voice in their government’s decisions, but an outdated and misguided Census Bureau policy that counts incarcerated people in the wrong place gives a few residents of the state a megaphone. It is a problem known as prison gerrymandering, and Georgia lawmakers can fix it.
Georgia blindly follows outdated bureaucratic federal policy
Every ten years, when the Census Bureau conducts its official tally of the nation’s population, it incorrectly counts incarcerated people as residents of prison cells rather than in their home communities. This is despite the fact that they usually are not from the prison town, have no family or social ties there, likely won’t stay there for long, and state residence law says they’re not residents there. When state officials then use that incorrect Census data in the legislative redistricting process, they inadvertently inflate the populations of those areas — in violation of constitutional principles of equal representation. This gives residents of state legislative districts that contain correctional facilities a particularly loud voice in government, allowing them to have an outsized influence on debates about education, local gun control, compensation for wrongful conviction, and more, at the expense of nearly every other person in the state.
To ensure equal representation, states across the country have taken steps to fix this problem that the Census Bureau created. But Georgia is one of the remaining states still suffering from this “prison gerrymandering.” While the 2030 Census count is still years away, Georgia needs to act now to avoid prison gerrymandering the next time it redraws its districts.
Prison gerrymandering significantly distorts Georgia’s state legislative districts
In Georgia, there are three state House districts that powerfully illustrate how prisons distort district populations and give some residents a louder voice in government as a result of prison gerrymandering.
In these three House of Representatives districts — districts 133, 148, and 157 — correctional facilities account for a significant portion of the population. In District 133, for example, correctional facilities make up 7% of the population. That means that just 93 residents of that district have as much political clout as 100 residents in other districts. That imbalance in representation comes from the state choosing to redistrict based on Census numbers that don’t match the reality of where people live.
Three most prison-gerrymandered House of Representatives districts in Georgia:
These three districts are the most prison-gerrymandered in Georgia. For details on all districts, see the Appendix.
District (2023)
District Location
Notable facilities
Percent of the district that is incarcerated
133
Bleckley, Dodge, Twiggs, Wilkinson, and part of Telfair Counties
Dodge State Prison, McRae Correctional Institution, Telfair State Prison
7%
148
Crisp, Pulaski, Wilcox, and parts of Ben Hill and Houston Counties
Pulaski State Prison, Wilcox State Prison, Mcever Probation Detention Center
6%
157
Evans, Jeff Davis, and parts of Appling and Tattnall Counties
Rogers State Prison, Georgia State Prison, Appling Integrated Treatment Facility
6%
These three districts are the most prison-gerrymandered state legislative districts in Georgia. Large chunks of their population are made up of prisons that contain people from other parts of the state, instead of local residents. Adding to the problem, nearly one in six people incarcerated in county jails are held for state and federal agencies, meaning that they come from all over the state and the country.
Federal facilities exemplify how counting someone at the location of the facility counts them in the wrong district. For example, only 2.8% of people incarcerated in Federal Bureau of Prisons facilities, such as those counted at the McRea Correctional Institution located in District 133, come from Georgia. That means, statistically, only about 37 people that the Census Bureau counted at McRea Correctional Institution were likely Georgia residents. Given that the state has 180 districts, it’s unlikely that anyone incarcerated at the facility was a resident of District 133.
Not only were the 1,324 people incarcerated at McRae not residents of District 133 at the time of the Census, they were all moved when the Bureau of Prisons ended its contract with the company that owned the McRae Correctional Institution in 2022. And the prison sat empty until the Georgia Department of Corrections bought the facility and reopened it as the McRae Women’s Facility in 2025, which now holds about 600 women from across Georgia. Decisions about whether to keep a prison open or not shouldn’t change how power is distributed in state government, but because of prison gerrymandering, these arbitrary population swings can skew political representation for a whole decade.
In Georgia, state and local facilities regularly contain people who are incarcerated far from home, have no ties to the communities where the facilities are located, and are moved regularly between facilities for administrative convenience. Simply put, being incarcerated in a specific facility doesn’t make someone a resident of the surrounding district.
Prison gerrymandering disproportionately harms Georgia’s Black residents
Prison gerrymandering reduces the political power of nearly all Georgia residents by allowing a few districts with large correctional facilities to claim residents from all over the state.1 It particularly harms Black people and enshrines the racial inequities of mass incarceration into the state’s legislative districts.
In Georgia, like across the country, mass incarceration has a disproportionate impact along racial lines. Black residents in the state are incarcerated at significantly higher rates and, therefore, are counted in the wrong place more often than Georgia’s white residents. Black residents make up 31% of the state population, but 59% of people in prisons and 51% of people in jails.
Counting incarcerated people in the wrong place adds up. Over 6,300 Black incarcerated people were counted in the wrong place in just the three districts highlighted in this report alone. The same pattern continues across the 73 Georgia districts that contain significant incarcerated populations, meaning that Census Bureau policies effectively silence the voices of a large portion of Georgia’s Black residents when the state fails to correct its redistricting data.
Georgia law says a prison cell is not a residence. Census Bureau policy disagrees
Not only does the Census Bureau’s redistricting data cause prison gerrymandering, but it also doesn’t comply with Georgia law. The state’s statute on voting2 residence — determining where someone is represented in government — explains how being incarcerated doesn’t change your residence to the prison location:
A person shall not be considered to have gained a residence in any county or municipality of this state into which such person has come for temporary purposes only without the intention of making such county or municipality such person’s permanent place of abode.
(Georgia Annotated Code § 21-2-217(3).)
Being held in a correctional institution simply does not change someone’s residence because incarcerated people are only held temporarily and don’t intend to stay there.3 A correctional facility may seem permanent, but people only stay there temporarily. Not only are incarcerated people regularly moved between facilities while incarcerated, 4 most people don’t generally stay in the area of the prison after their release. So, under Georgia law, they aren’t residents of the facility location.
Instead of following state law, though, the Census Bureau follows its own “residence rule” to choose where to count incarcerated people — where they “live and sleep most of the time.” But it doesn’t even follow this rule properly when it comes to counting incarcerated people.
The Census Bureau counts incarcerated people at the location of the facility where they happen to be held on Census Day under the mistaken belief that that is where incarcerated people “live and sleep most of the time.” The facts, however, do not support its interpretation of its own definition of residence. It is well-established that in the modern era of mass incarceration, incarcerated people do not “live and sleep most of the time” at the facility where they are held on any given day, including Census Day.
Representation in local government is also harmed by prison gerrymandering
The impact of prison gerrymandering is most clearly visible at the small scale: county governments. With smaller districts at the local government level, even a single facility can have a tremendous impact on the redistricting process.
For example, when Mitchell County drew its County Commissioners districts after the 2020 Census, it included people counted at Autry State Prison as if they were residents of the county. That means the 1,291 people counted at the state facility were counted as part of County Commissioner District 2, even though it is unlikely any were residents of Mitchell County. As a result, 66 true residents of District 5 were given the same political power on the Commission as 100 people in every other district.
The problem can be so stark at the local level that counties actively avoid prison gerrymandering as a matter of common sense. There are three counties — Stewart County, Calhoun County, and Telfair — where the incarcerated population alone accounts for more than the population of a single district. For counties faced with such absurd results, they concluded that the facility populations shouldn’t be included in their redistricting data.
Even counties facing much smaller distortions take matters into their own hands to reject the Bureau’s way of counting incarcerated people. For example, Long County adjusts its redistricting data to remove the state’s Long Unit facility when drawing its County Commissioner districts, even though the prison accounts for just 1% of the county’s population. And Long County was one of 6 Georgia counties that ended prison gerrymandering for the first time in the 2020 redistricting cycle. In fact, our research over the last 3 decades found an ever-growing number of counties rejecting the Census Bureau’s counts of incarcerated people, now nearly half of Georgia counties that contain prisons and jails adjust their redistricting data to avoid prison gerrymandering.5
Georgia’s counties are not unique; facing these absurd distortions in representation, local governments across the country6 are taking action and rejecting the Bureau’s way of counting incarcerated people, even when states fail to act.
In Georgia, like across the country, local governments have found that adjusting redistricting data to avoid prison gerrymandering is quite easy. However, the state should provide a more efficient and complete solution for its local governments. Although it is not fair that the state has to correct for this federal issue, the state is in a better position to take on that burden than each individual county government.
Nationally, state and local governments are addressing the problem, but the Georgia legislature is lagging behind
Over the course of the last few decades, over 200 local governments and a growing number of states have taken steps on their own to fix this problem. Nearly half of the US population now lives in a place that corrects redistricting data they receive from the Census to avoid prison gerrymandering.
States that have ended prison gerrymandering include deep “blue” states like California, “purple” states like Maine and Pennsylvania, and deep “red” states like Montana — where prison gerrymandering-reform legislation received wide bipartisan support. But Georgia is falling behind and letting the state’s democracy be skewed by an outdated federal system.
2030 may seem far away, but other states have learned that the earlier that reforms are put in place, the less expensive, easier to produce, and more accurate the final redistricting data becomes. Every state has a different legislative approach to ending prison gerrymandering, but as a practical matter, this model bill, prepared by a coalition of civil rights, voting rights, and criminal justice organizations, is a great place to start. It provides clear guidance on how this data should be collected, by whom, and how it will be used for the redistricting process.
The Census Bureau is unlikely to change its policies about how to count incarcerated people in time for the 2030 Census, meaning that unless Georgia acts quickly, the state will once again be driven into prison-gerrymandering its legislative districts.
Georgia needs to end prison gerrymandering now.
Appendix: Correctional facility populations in Georgia House of Representatives Districts, 2020 Census
State House District (2023)
2020 Census: Total Population
2020 Census: Incarcerated Population
Percent of the District that is Incarcerated
1
59,666
189
0.32%
2
59,773
632
1.06%
3
60,199
142
0.24%
4
59,070
394
0.67%
5
58,837
218
0.37%
6
59,712
131
0.22%
7
59,081
106
0.18%
8
59,244
345
0.58%
9
59,474
126
0.21%
10
59,519
1,845
3.10%
11
58,792
55
0.09%
12
59,300
1,891
3.19%
13
59,150
249
0.42%
14
59,135
0
0.00%
15
59,213
502
0.85%
16
59,402
131
0.22%
17
59,120
379
0.64%
18
59,335
0
0.00%
19
59,752
0
0.00%
20
60,107
0
0.00%
21
59,529
0
0.00%
22
59,460
0
0.00%
23
59,048
483
0.82%
24
59,011
0
0.00%
25
59,414
0
0.00%
26
59,248
349
0.59%
27
58,795
0
0.00%
28
58,972
0
0.00%
29
59,200
0
0.00%
30
59,266
660
1.11%
31
59,901
242
0.40%
32
59,145
133
0.22%
33
59,187
558
0.94%
34
58,947
0
0.00%
35
59,689
0
0.00%
36
59,898
26
0.04%
37
58,927
0
0.00%
38
59,317
0
0.00%
39
59,381
15
0.03%
40
60,184
0
0.00%
41
60,122
1,189
1.98%
42
59,017
8
0.01%
43
59,626
0
0.00%
44
60,002
0
0.00%
45
59,738
0
0.00%
46
59,108
0
0.00%
47
59,126
0
0.00%
48
59,003
0
0.00%
49
59,153
0
0.00%
50
59,523
0
0.00%
51
58,952
0
0.00%
52
59,811
0
0.00%
53
59,953
0
0.00%
54
60,083
0
0.00%
55
59,115
2,548
4.31%
56
59,783
0
0.00%
57
58,961
275
0.47%
58
58,788
2,358
4.01%
59
59,434
0
0.00%
60
59,560
0
0.00%
61
59,161
0
0.00%
62
59,450
14
0.02%
63
59,381
2,280
3.84%
64
59,608
0
0.00%
65
59,129
0
0.00%
66
60,306
474
0.79%
67
59,135
0
0.00%
68
59,477
0
0.00%
69
58,682
133
0.23%
70
59,121
370
0.63%
71
59,538
0
0.00%
72
59,660
567
0.95%
73
60,036
0
0.00%
74
59,120
1,040
1.76%
75
59,743
409
0.68%
76
59,759
0
0.00%
77
59,242
378
0.64%
78
59,734
0
0.00%
79
59,500
0
0.00%
80
59,461
0
0.00%
81
58,919
0
0.00%
82
59,789
0
0.00%
83
59,416
0
0.00%
84
58,801
0
0.00%
85
59,591
1,361
2.28%
86
59,153
0
0.00%
87
59,684
0
0.00%
88
59,689
0
0.00%
89
60,231
0
0.00%
90
59,856
622
1.04%
91
59,976
0
0.00%
92
60,150
0
0.00%
93
60,290
220
0.36%
94
60,192
0
0.00%
95
58,992
0
0.00%
96
59,515
0
0.00%
97
59,072
0
0.00%
98
59,998
0
0.00%
99
59,850
0
0.00%
100
60,030
0
0.00%
101
59,240
0
0.00%
102
60,038
1,674
2.79%
103
60,197
0
0.00%
104
59,362
1,300
2.19%
105
59,395
0
0.00%
106
59,981
0
0.00%
107
60,033
0
0.00%
108
58,942
0
0.00%
109
59,697
0
0.00%
110
60,278
0
0.00%
111
59,900
0
0.00%
112
60,167
284
0.47%
113
59,413
0
0.00%
114
59,401
312
0.53%
115
59,381
0
0.00%
116
59,777
0
0.00%
117
59,533
317
0.53%
118
59,901
2,680
4.47%
119
58,947
0
0.00%
120
58,982
0
0.00%
121
59,127
42
0.07%
122
59,632
169
0.28%
123
59,282
86
0.15%
124
59,221
33
0.06%
125
60,137
227
0.38%
126
59,260
1,153
1.95%
127
58,678
0
0.00%
128
58,864
2,662
4.52%
129
58,829
162
0.28%
130
59,203
817
1.38%
131
58,890
0
0.00%
132
59,142
1,442
2.44%
133
58,893
4,373
7.43%
134
59,575
140
0.23%
135
59,870
583
0.97%
136
59,298
162
0.27%
137
59,551
1,768
2.97%
138
58,912
175
0.30%
139
59,010
0
0.00%
140
59,294
154
0.26%
141
59,019
0
0.00%
142
59,312
0
0.00%
143
59,432
1,031
1.73%
144
59,307
140
0.24%
145
58,805
2,092
3.56%
146
60,203
0
0.00%
147
60,375
0
0.00%
148
59,984
3,659
6.10%
149
59,715
2,470
4.14%
150
59,276
3,313
5.59%
151
60,059
2,091
3.48%
152
60,134
830
1.38%
153
59,299
470
0.79%
154
59,994
1,618
2.70%
155
58,759
1,667
2.84%
156
59,444
2,811
4.73%
157
59,957
3,409
5.69%
158
59,440
1,133
1.91%
159
59,895
745
1.24%
160
59,935
1,455
2.43%
161
60,097
1,877
3.12%
162
60,308
0
0.00%
163
60,123
1,459
2.43%
164
60,101
0
0.00%
165
59,978
0
0.00%
166
60,242
0
0.00%
167
59,493
260
0.44%
168
60,147
183
0.30%
169
59,138
3,131
5.29%
170
60,116
251
0.42%
171
59,237
2,094
3.53%
172
59,961
386
0.64%
173
59,743
82
0.14%
174
59,852
2,325
3.88%
175
59,993
870
1.45%
176
59,470
2,314
3.89%
177
59,992
772
1.29%
178
59,877
1,874
3.13%
179
59,356
358
0.60%
180
59,412
0
0.00%
Table notes
State House District (2023)
State House of Representatives districts currently in place at the time of this report’s publication. Enacted in December 2023, drawn based on 2020 Census data.
2020 Census: Total Population
Total population reported for all blocks in the district (as redistricted in 2022). Block populations reported for the 2020 Census in the PL 94-171 redistricting summary files Table P1.
2020 Census: Incarcerated Population
Total incarcerated population reported in all blocks in the district (as redistricted in 2022), based on the incarcerated population in group quarters reported for the 2020 Census in the PL 94-171 redistricting summary files Table P5
Percent of the District that is Incarcerated
This is the number of incarcerated people counted in the district divided by the total population of the district.
Correctional Facility Populations: To calculate the percentage of each district’s population that was in correctional facilities, we used the redistricting data (PL 94-171) from the 2020 Census. Table P1 provides the total population for each Census block and Table P5 provides the number of incarcerated people for each Census Block. Notably, this approach includes people in all kinds of correctional facilities, including state prisons, federal prisons, private prisons, local jails, halfway houses, etc.
Identifying specific facilities: Table P5 provides the population of correctional facilities without distinguishing between state, federal, or private facilities and it is published for each Census block. Census blocks do not necessarily translate directly to facilities, as some facilities are counted in multiple blocks and some blocks contain multiple facilities. To aid redistricting officials and advocates with using this data, the Prison Policy Initiative maintains a Facility Locator Tool that contains annotations of most of the Census blocks in the country that contain correctional facilities. These annotations rely on publicly-available data to identify facility names and types in each of these blocks.
Calculating how many Georgia residents are held by the Bureau of Prisons:
Our calculations on the number of people in federal prisons in each state are based on data provided by the Bureau of Prisons in response to our periodic Freedom of Information Act requests.
How this report quantifies prison gerrymandering compared to other analyses: There are a few ways to calculate the impact of prison gerrymandering, so other researchers may have used slightly different approaches that generate slightly different numbers for the same general problem. For example, some analyses only focus on prisons and exclude jail populations. That choice makes sense when looking at state-level policies and state districts because people in jails are very likely to also live in the legislative district where the jail is located. However, for this analysis, we included jails as well as state correctional facilities because 16% of the people held in Georgia jails are held for state and federal authorities. Still other approaches, such as that taken by the Redistricting Data Hub, are based on estimates of incarcerated people’s home addresses. That approach adds an additional level of precision for counting people held in state facilities because it seeks to not only address where these people were counted incorrectly — which accounts for the bulk of prison gerrymandering’s population distortion — but to also estimate where they should have been counted. Unfortunately, this approach isn’t able to reflect where people in federal facilities, most jails, and private facilities are from. And so, for simplicity, this report doesn’t use that approach.
Each of these approaches has its own merits, and none are universally better than others; they all highlight different aspects of how prison gerrymandering skews population numbers, and each has its own use. The complexities inherent in the current patchwork approach to identifying and solving prison gerrymandering point to the need for the Census Bureau to count incarcerated people at home in the first place in order to provide a comprehensive solution to prison gerrymandering.
Footnotes
People entering Georgia’s state prisons in 2020 came from every single of the state’s counties according to the state’s statistical report. ↩
Voters include incarcerated people, many of whom are incarcerated while awaiting trial and retain the right to vote. It may be surprising, but many people incarcerated in Georgia are still eligible to vote, and when they do vote they are required to vote by absentee ballot with their home address. ↩
The statutes double down on the requirement of intent in changing a residence: “The mere intention to acquire a new residence, without the fact of removal, shall avail nothing; neither shall the fact of removal without the intention.” (Georgia Annotated Code § 21-2-217(9).). Georgia law is explicit that being moved from home against your will does not give you a new residence. The person’s legal residence cannot simply change a by being taken away from home or moved between facilities — their home address remains their residence until they return. ↩
The following Georgia counties adjust their local redistricting data to avoid prison gerrymandering: Butts, Calhoun, Charlton, Coffee, Dodge, Dooly, Emanuel, Hancock, Irwin, Jenkins, Johnson, Long, Macon, Monroe, Montgomery, Stewart, Tattnall, Telfair, Washington, Wayne, Wheeler, and Wilcox County.
Of those, 6 counties did so for the first time this redistricting cycle: Coffee, Emanuel, Long, Monroe, Montgomery and Wayne County. ↩
Nationwide we identified over 200 local governments that avoided prison gerrymandering after the 2000 and 2010 Censuses (decades when zero and two, respectively, states adjusted their redistricting data to count people at home). This decade we limited the scope of our research but still found an additional 21 local governments scattered across 10 states that started doing so after the 2020 Census despite those states continuing to use unadjusted data for state-level districts. ↩
Everyone in Florida is supposed to have an equal voice in their government’s decisions, but an outdated and misguided Census Bureau policy that counts incarcerated people in the wrong place gives a few residents of the state a megaphone. It is a problem known as prison gerrymandering, and Florida lawmakers can fix it.
Florida blindly follows outdated bureaucratic federal policy
Every ten years, when the Census Bureau conducts its official tally of the nation’s population, it incorrectly counts incarcerated people as residents of prison cells rather than in their home communities. This is despite the fact that they usually are not from the prison town, have no family or social ties there, are often moved between facilities and won’t stay there after release. When state officials then use that incorrect Census data in the legislative redistricting process, they inadvertently inflate the populations of those areas — in violation of constitutional principles of equal representation. This gives residents of state legislative districts that contain correctional facilities a particularly loud voice in government, allowing them to have an outsized influence on debates about gun safety, Community Reinvestment Agencies, wetlands protection and development, and more, at the expense of nearly every other person in the state.
In order to ensure equal representation, states across the country have taken steps to fix this problem that the Census Bureau created. But, Florida is one of the remaining states still suffering from this “prison gerrymandering.” While the 2030 Census count is still years away, Florida needs to act now to avoid prison gerrymandering the next time it redraws its districts.
Prison gerrymandering significantly distorts Florida’s state legislative districts
In Florida, there are four state House districts that powerfully illustrate how prisons distort district populations and give some residents a louder voice in government as a result of prison gerrymandering.
In these four House of Representatives districts — districts 7, 10, 5, and 52 — correctional facilities account for a significant portion of the population. In District 7, for example, correctional facilities make up about 10% of the population. That means that just 90 residents of that district have as much political clout as 100 residents in normal districts. That imbalance in representation comes from the state choosing to redistrict based on Census numbers that don’t match the reality of where people live.
Four most prison-gerrymandered House of Representatives districts in Florida:
These four districts are the most prison-gerrymandered in Florida. For details on all districts, see the Appendix
District
District Location
Notable facilities
Percent of the district that is incarcerated
7
Gulf, Liberty, Franklin, Wakulla, Taylor, Dixie, Lafayette, Suwannee, Hamilton, parts of Leon and Jefferson
State Correctional Institutions and Work Camps: Gulf, Liberty, Franklin, Wakulla, Taylor, Cross City, Mayo, Suwannee, and Hamilton County facilities: Wakulla County Jail
10%
10
Columbia, Baker, Union, Bradford, and part of Alachua
State Correctional Institutions: Columbia, Lake City, Baker, Lawtey, New River, 1 Union, Florida State Prison County facilities: Columbia County Detention Center, Baker County Jail, Bradford County Jail
8%
5
Walton, Holmes, Washington, Jackson, Calhoun
State Correctional Institutions: Walton, Holmes, Northwest Florida, Jackson, Graceville, Apalachee, Calhoun County facilities: Walton County Jail, Jackson County Correctional Facility Federal Facilities: FCI Marianna
7%
52
Sumter and part of Hernando
State Correctional Institutions and Work Camps: Sumter, Hernando County facilities:
Sumter County Detention Center, Hernando County Jail Federal Facilities: FCC Coleman
5%
These four districts are the most prison-gerrymandered state legislative districts in Florida. Significant portions of their population are made up of prisons that contain people from all over the state, instead of local residents. State facilities regularly contain people who are incarcerated far from home, have no ties to the communities where the facilities are located, and are moved regularly between facilities for administrative convenience.
Even worse, the largest facility in District 52 — accounting for nearly 70% of incarcerated people in that district — is FCC Coleman, which is used by the Federal Bureau of Prisons to hold people from all over the country. About 6% of the Bureau of Prisons population comes from Florida, which means out of the 6,285 people held by the Bureau of Prisons at FCC Coleman, only about 371 people are likely Florida residents. And most of those 371 Florida residents are unlikely to be actual residents of District 52.
But even incarcerated people who are Florida residents aren’t usually residents of the district where the Census Bureau counted them. The Census Bureau counts incarcerated people at the location of the facility where they happen to be held on Census Day under the mistaken belief that that is where incarcerated people “live and sleep most of the time.” The facts, however, do not support its interpretation of its own definition of residence.
It is well-established that in the modern era of mass incarceration, incarcerated people do not “live and sleep most of the time” at the facility where they are held on any given day (including Census Day). Nationally, 75% of people serve time in more than one prison facility, and 12% of people serve time in at least five facilities before returning home. Incarcerated people don’t generally stay in the area of the prison after their release and almost always go back to the communities they came from — if not the exact address they lived at before their arrest. Simply being held in a correctional institution does not make that facility your residence.
Prison gerrymandering disproportionately harms Florida’s Black residents
Prison gerrymandering reduces the political power of nearly all Florida residents by allowing a few districts with large correctional facilities to claim residents from all over the state. It particularly harms Black people and enshrines the racial inequities of mass incarceration into the state’s legislative districts.
In Florida, like across the country, mass incarceration has a disproportionate impact along racial lines. In Florida, Black residents are incarcerated at disproportionate rates and, therefore, are counted in the wrong place more often than Florida’s white residents.
The racial impact of prison gerrymandering is so strong that, for example, about a third of all Black people counted in State House Districts 7 and 52 were actually behind bars, rather than living in the community. 2
Statewide, Black residents make up 15% of the state population, but nearly half of the people in prisons and 41% of the people in jails.
Counting incarcerated people in the wrong place adds up. Just in the four districts highlighted above, nearly 25,000 Black people were counted in the wrong place. This means that the Census Bureau policies are effectively silencing the voices of a large portion of the state’s Black residents.
Florida’s local governments are already tackling prison gerrymandering on their own
Nationally, state and local governments are addressing the problem, but Florida is lagging behind
Over the course of the last few decades, over 200 local governments and a growing number of states have taken action on their own to fix this problem. Nearly half of the US population now lives in a place that corrects redistricting data they receive from the Census to avoid prison gerrymandering.
States that have ended prison gerrymandering on their own include deep “blue” states like California, “purple” states like Maine and Pennsylvania, and deep “red” states like Montana — where prison gerrymandering-reform legislation received wide bipartisan support. But Florida is falling behind and letting the state’s democracy be skewed by an outdated federal system.
2030 may seem far away, but other states have learned that the earlier that reforms are put in place, the less expensive, easier to produce, and more accurate the final redistricting data becomes. Every state has a different legislative approach to ending prison gerrymandering, but as a practical matter, this model bill, prepared by a coalition of civil rights, voting rights, and criminal justice organizations, is a great place to start. It provides clear guidance on how this data should be collected, by whom, and how it will be used for the redistricting process.
The Census Bureau is unlikely to change its policies about how to count incarcerated people in time for the 2030 Census, meaning that unless Florida acts quickly, the state will once again be driven into prison-gerrymandering their legislative districts.
Florida needs to end prison gerrymandering now.
Appendix: Correctional facility populations in Florida House of Representatives Districts, 2020 Census
State House District
Total Population
Incarcerated Population
Percent of the District that is Incarcerated
1
178,511
2,244
1.3%
2
180,797
1,038
0.6%
3
178,528
5,520
3.1%
4
183,737
1,715
0.9%
5
181,243
12,585
6.9%
6
175,216
1,744
1.0%
7
182,734
17,486
9.6%
8
175,555
2,094
1.2%
9
182,853
3,095
1.7%
10
180,867
13,842
7.7%
11
177,922
0
0.0%
12
181,072
15
0.0%
13
183,002
0
0.0%
14
176,278
2,927
1.7%
15
182,272
783
0.4%
16
180,047
0
0.0%
17
183,248
65
0.0%
18
180,300
439
0.2%
19
175,457
154
0.1%
20
175,874
1,174
0.7%
21
176,405
6,934
3.9%
22
183,529
950
0.5%
23
176,178
629
0.4%
24
175,595
913
0.5%
25
176,494
1,037
0.6%
26
177,279
697
0.4%
27
183,145
0
0.0%
28
178,466
2,916
1.6%
29
176,556
0
0.0%
30
181,596
0
0.0%
31
179,252
1,054
0.6%
32
178,737
0
0.0%
33
183,186
0
0.0%
34
178,835
490
0.3%
35
176,404
2,469
1.4%
36
175,313
770
0.4%
37
175,353
0
0.0%
38
175,442
0
0.0%
39
175,326
0
0.0%
40
175,326
81
0.0%
41
176,364
2,122
1.2%
42
180,528
13
0.0%
43
175,629
0
0.0%
44
175,329
0
0.0%
45
175,973
0
0.0%
46
176,200
141
0.1%
47
176,233
649
0.4%
48
183,593
1,563
0.9%
49
178,192
2,359
1.3%
50
180,902
0
0.0%
51
182,359
1,471
0.8%
52
182,726
9,201
5.0%
53
175,358
0
0.0%
54
176,277
599
0.3%
55
175,430
1,392
0.8%
56
176,367
0
0.0%
57
177,343
88
0.0%
58
175,888
0
0.0%
59
178,235
2,649
1.5%
60
175,492
0
0.0%
61
175,321
0
0.0%
62
176,028
2,852
1.6%
63
175,559
83
0.0%
64
175,706
101
0.1%
65
176,912
57
0.0%
66
175,639
0
0.0%
67
177,964
0
0.0%
68
175,705
0
0.0%
69
175,349
0
0.0%
70
175,478
1,790
1.0%
71
175,460
0
0.0%
72
176,500
153
0.1%
73
183,473
830
0.5%
74
183,447
0
0.0%
75
183,275
0
0.0%
76
181,871
4,353
2.4%
77
183,022
0
0.0%
78
183,124
1,484
0.8%
79
183,355
0
0.0%
80
183,411
0
0.0%
81
182,510
585
0.3%
82
183,534
218
0.1%
83
178,332
5,885
3.3%
84
183,408
1,196
0.7%
85
182,082
0
0.0%
86
179,269
2,343
1.3%
87
182,880
0
0.0%
88
175,984
1,319
0.7%
89
177,515
0
0.0%
90
179,439
0
0.0%
91
180,714
0
0.0%
92
179,284
0
0.0%
93
180,537
0
0.0%
94
178,736
2,709
1.5%
95
181,346
0
0.0%
96
180,503
0
0.0%
97
181,456
0
0.0%
98
183,663
1,802
1.0%
99
180,790
0
0.0%
100
182,865
1,318
0.7%
101
179,020
0
0.0%
102
183,490
0
0.0%
103
182,670
0
0.0%
104
176,085
142
0.1%
105
183,727
20
0.0%
106
180,735
0
0.0%
107
183,505
0
0.0%
108
181,345
45
0.0%
109
183,366
2,375
1.3%
110
178,199
139
0.1%
111
182,977
2,070
1.1%
112
179,362
918
0.5%
113
182,742
0
0.0%
114
181,962
18
0.0%
115
183,386
0
0.0%
116
182,984
0
0.0%
117
182,260
0
0.0%
118
183,694
1,190
0.6%
119
183,655
0
0.0%
120
183,229
5,231
2.9%
Table notes
Total Population
Total population reported for all blocks in the district (as redistricted in 2022). Block populations reported for the 2020 Census in the PL 94-171 redistricting summary files Table P1.
Incarcerated Population
Total incarcerated population reported in all blocks in the district (as redistricted in 2022), based on the incarcerated population in group quarters reported for the 2020 Census in the PL 94-171 redistricting summary files Table P5
Percent of the District that is Incarcerated
This is the number of incarcerated people counted in the district divided by the total population of the district.
Correctional Facility Populations: To calculate the percentage of each district’s population that was in correctional facilities, we used the redistricting data (PL 94-171) from the 2020 Census. Table P1 provides the total population for each Census block and Table P5 provides the number of incarcerated people for each Census Block. Notably, this approach includes people in all kinds of correctional facilities, including state prisons, federal prisons, private prisons, local jails, halfway houses, etc.
Identifying specific facilities: Census Bureau’s PL 94-171 data Table P5 provides the population of correctional facilities without distinguishing between state, federal, or private facilities and it is published for each Census block. Census blocks do not necessarily translate directly to facilities, as some facilities are counted in multiple blocks and some blocks contain multiple facilities. To aid redistricting officials and advocates with using this data, the Prison Policy Initiative maintains a Facility Locator Tool that contains annotations of most of the Census blocks in the country that contain correctional facilities. These annotations rely on publicly-available data to identify facility names and types in each of these blocks.
Calculating how many Florida residents are held by the Bureau of Prisons:
Our calculations on the number of people in federal prisons in each state are based on data provided by the Bureau of Prisons in response to our periodic Freedom of Information Act requests.
How this report quantifies prison gerrymandering compared to other analyses: There are a few ways to calculate the impact of prison gerrymandering, so other researchers may have used slightly different approaches that generate slightly different numbers for the same general problem. For example, some analyses only focus on prisons and exclude jail populations. That choice makes sense when looking at state-level policies and state districts because people in jails are very likely to also live in the legislative district where the jail is located. However, for this analysis, we included jails as well as state correctional facilities because 7% of the people held in Florida jails are held for state and federal authorities. Still other approaches, such as that taken by the Redistricting Data Hub, are based on estimates of incarcerated people’s home addresses, or FRRC’s maps based on last-known addresses for people incarcerated in Florida’s Department of Corrections. Those approaches adds an additional level of precision for counting people held in state facilities because it seeks to not only address where these people were counted incorrectly — which accounts for the bulk of prison gerrymandering’s population distortion — but to also estimate where they should have been counted. Unfortunately, this approach isn’t able to reflect where people in federal facilities, most jails, and private facilities are from. And so, for simplicity, this report doesn’t use that approach.
Each of these approaches has its own merits, and none are universally better than others; they all highlight different aspects of how prison gerrymandering skews population numbers, and each has its own use. The complexities inherent in the current patchwork approach to identifying and solving prison gerrymandering point to the need for the Census Bureau to count incarcerated people at home in the first place in order to provide a comprehensive solution to prison gerrymandering.
Footnotes
The 853 people counted at the New River Correctional Institution in 2020 continue to distort the population of District 7 even though the facility closed in 2021. ↩
The Census numbers paint a similarly skewed picture in other districts. For example, 27% of Black people counted in District 5 and 22% of the people in District 10 aren’t actually residents of those districts but rather counted there as part of the correctional facility populations. ↩
Nationwide, we identified hundreds of governments that avoided prison gerrymandering after the 2000 and 2010 Censuses (decades when zero and two states, respectively, adjusted their redistricting data to count people at home). This decade, we limited the scope of our research but still found an additional 24 local governments scattered across 10 states that addressed the problem after the 2020 Census despite those states continuing to use unadjusted data for state-level districts. ↩
Everyone in Texas is supposed to have an equal voice in their government’s decisions, but an outdated and misguided Census Bureau policy that counts incarcerated people in the wrong place gives a few residents of the state a megaphone. It is a problem known as prison gerrymandering, and Texas lawmakers can fix it.
Texas blindly follows outdated bureaucratic federal policy
Every ten years, when the Census Bureau conducts its official tally of the nation’s population, it incorrectly counts incarcerated people as residents of prison cells rather than in their home communities. This is despite the fact that they usually are not from the prison town, have no family or social ties there, likely won’t stay there for long, and state residence law says they’re not residents there. When state officials then use that incorrect Census data in the legislative redistricting process, they inadvertently inflate the populations of those areas — in violation of constitutional principles of equal representation. This gives residents of state legislative districts that contain correctional facilities a particularly loud voice in government, allowing them to have an outsized influence on debates about immigration enforcement, property taxes, schools, gun control, and more, at the expense of nearly every other person in the state.
To ensure equal representation, states across the country have taken steps to fix this problem that the Census Bureau created. But, Texas is one of the remaining states still suffering from this “prison gerrymandering.” While the 2030 Census count is still years away, Texas needs to act now to avoid prison gerrymandering the next time it redraws its districts.
Prison gerrymandering significantly distorts Texas’s state legislative districts
In Texas, there are two state House districts that powerfully illustrate how prisons distort district populations and give some residents a louder voice in government as a result of prison gerrymandering.
In these two House of Representatives districts —districts 12 and 8 — correctional facilities account for a significant portion of the population. In District 12, for example, correctional facilities make up 10% of the population. That means that just 90 residents of that district have as much political clout as 100 residents in other districts. That imbalance in representation comes from the state choosing to redistrict based on Census numbers that don’t match the reality of where people live.
Two most prison-gerrymandered House of Representatives districts in Texas
These two districts are the most prison-gerrymandered in Texas. For details on all districts, see the Appendix.
District
District Location
Notable facilities
Percent of the district that is incarcerated
12
Grimes, Madison, Robertson, Walker, Washington, and parts of Brazos Counties
TDCJ Units: Pack, Luther, Ferguson, Ellis, Estelle, Goree, Holliday Transfer, Wynne, Byrd, Huntsville, and the Brazos County Detention Center and Walker County Jail
10%
8
Anderson, Cherokee, Navarro, and parts of Henderson Counties
TDCJ Units: George Beto,Joe F. Gurney, Louis C. Powledge, Michael, Coffield, Hodge, Skyview, and the Anderson County and Navarro County Jails
8%
These two districts are the most prison-gerrymandered state legislative districts in Texas. Large chunks of their population are made up of prisons that contain people from other parts of the state, instead of local residents. State facilities regularly contain people who are incarcerated far from home, have no ties to the communities where the facilities are located, and are moved regularly between facilities for administrative convenience.
Prison gerrymandering disproportionately harms Texas’s Black residents
Prison gerrymandering reduces the political power of nearly all Texas residents by allowing a few districts with large correctional facilities to claim residents from all over the state. It particularly harms Black people and enshrines the racial inequities of mass incarceration into the state’s legislative districts.
In Texas, like across the country, mass incarceration has a disproportionate impact along racial lines. In Texas, Black residents are incarcerated at significantly higher rates and, therefore, are counted in the wrong place more often than Texas’s white residents.
Black residents make up less than 12% of the state population, but 33% of people in prisons and 28% of people in jails.
Counting incarcerated people in the wrong place adds up. Just in the two districts highlighted above, over 13,000 Black people were counted in the wrong place. This means that the Census Bureau policies are effectively silencing the voices of a large portion of the state’s Black residents.
Texas law says a prison cell is not a residence. Census Bureau policy disagrees
Not only does the Census Bureau’s redistricting data cause prison gerrymandering, it also doesn’t comply with Texas law. The state’s statute on voting residence — determining where someone is represented — is clear that being incarcerated does not make you a resident of the facility location:
A person who is an inmate in a penal institution… does not, while an inmate, acquire residence at the place where the institution is located.
(Texas Annotated Code § 1.015(e).)
In fact, just being present in any place doesn’t make you a resident there. The statute continues, explicitly requiring an intent to lose or gain residence:
(a) In this code, “residence” means domicile, that is, one’s home and fixed place of habitation to which one intends to return after any temporary absence.
…
(c) A person does not lose the person’s residence by leaving the person’s home to go to another place for temporary purposes only.
(d) A person does not acquire a residence in a place to which the person has come for temporary purposes only and without the intention of making that place the person’s home.
(Texas Annotated Code § 1.015)
Being held in a correctional institution simply does not change your residence. And most incarcerated people intend to return home. Incarcerated people don’t generally stay in the area of the prison after their release and almost always go back to the communities they came from — if not the exact address they lived at before their arrest. So, under Texas law, they aren’t residents of the facility location.
Instead of following state law, though, the Census Bureau follows its own “residence rule” to choose where to count incarcerated people — where they “live and sleep most of the time.” But it doesn’t even follow this rule properly when it comes to counting incarcerated people.
The Census Bureau counts incarcerated people at the location of the facility where they happen to be held on Census Day under the mistaken belief that that is where incarcerated people “live and sleep most of the time.” The facts, however, do not support its interpretation of its own definition of residence. It is well-established that in the modern era of mass incarceration, incarcerated people do not “live and sleep most of the time” at the facility where they are held on any given day (including Census Day). Nationally, 75% of people serve time in more than one prison facility, and 12% of people serve time in at least five facilities before returning home.
Representation in local government is also harmed by prison gerrymandering
The impact of prison gerrymandering is most clearly visible at the small scale: city and county governments. With smaller districts at the local government level, even a single facility can have a tremendous impact on the redistricting process.
For example, after the 2020 Census, the city of Lockhart included the 1,172 people counted at the state’s Lockhart Unit as if they were residents of City Council District 1. As a result, 68 people in District 1 have the same political power on the City Council as 100 people in every other district.
Recognizing the problems created by the Census Bureau’s data, most places in Texas that have significant correctional facility populations have already started taking matters into their own hands to avoid prison gerrymandering.
Of the 65 cities, counties, and school districts in Texas that contained large correctional facilities during the 2010 redistricting cycle, the Prison Policy Initiative found that 56 of them avoided prison gerrymandering,1 while only 9 let the Census Bureau’s counts skew their residents’ representation in local government.2
Texas’ local governments are not unique; facing these absurd distortions in representation, local governments across the country are taking matters into their own hands and rejecting the Bureau’s way of counting incarcerated people,3 even when states fail to act.
In Texas, like across the country, local governments have found that adjusting redistricting data to avoid prison gerrymandering is quite easy. However, the state should provide a more efficient and complete solution for its local governments. Although it is not fair that the state has to correct for this federal issue, the state is in a better position to take on that burden than each individual locality.
Nationally, state and local governments are addressing the problem, but the Texas legislature is lagging behind
Over the course of the last few decades, over 200 local governments and a growing number of states have taken action on their own to fix this problem. Nearly half of the US population now lives in a place that corrects redistricting data they receive from the Census to avoid prison gerrymandering.
States that have ended prison gerrymandering on their own include deep “blue” states like California, “purple” states like Maine and Pennsylvania, and deep “red” states like Montana — where prison gerrymandering-reform legislation received wide bipartisan support. But Texas is falling behind and letting the state’s democracy be skewed by an outdated federal system.
2030 may seem far away, but other states have learned that the earlier that reforms are put in place, the less expensive, easier to produce, and more accurate the final redistricting data becomes. Every state has a different legislative approach to ending prison gerrymandering, but as a practical matter, this model bill, prepared by a coalition of civil rights, voting rights, and criminal justice organizations, is a great place to start. It provides clear guidance on how this data should be collected, by whom, and how it will be used for the redistricting process.
The Census Bureau is unlikely to change its policies about how to count incarcerated people in time for the 2030 Census, meaning that unless Texas acts quickly, the state will once again be driven into prison-gerrymandering their legislative districts.
Texas needs to end prison gerrymandering now.
Appendix: Correctional facility populations in Texas House of Representatives Districts, 2020 Census
State House District
Total Population
Incarcerated Population
Percent of the District that is Incarcerated
1
194,995
4,962
2.5%
2
196,284
474
0.2%
3
202,477
0
0.0%
4
195,819
753
0.4%
5
186,084
837
0.4%
6
189,005
962
0.5%
7
202,803
768
0.4%
8
192,599
15,095
7.8%
9
199,902
9,030
4.5%
10
192,455
275
0.1%
11
185,491
4,901
2.6%
12
202,487
20,295
10.0%
13
188,981
5,183
2.7%
14
203,047
1,918
0.9%
15
200,185
0
0.0%
16
190,052
2,502
1.3%
17
202,973
2,991
1.5%
18
202,990
4,662
2.3%
19
202,995
860
0.4%
20
203,898
374
0.2%
21
187,992
2,306
1.2%
22
186,322
9,769
5.2%
23
198,405
2,535
1.3%
24
198,848
0
0.0%
25
186,855
8,816
4.7%
26
199,811
756
0.4%
27
197,352
0
0.0%
28
197,627
0
0.0%
29
185,176
0
0.0%
30
189,735
1,659
0.9%
31
184,966
6,909
3.7%
32
187,448
197,
0.1%
33
190,539
204,
0.1%
34
189,560
1,899
1.0%
35
193,328
1,233
0.6%
36
186,731
0
0.0%
37
184,892
3,337
1.8%
38
186,152
1,078
0.6%
39
186,199
0
0.0%
40
185,455
3,305
1.8%
41
189,205
29
0.0%
42
184,728
72
0.0%
43
196,580
7,606
3.9%
44
192,359
437
0.2%
45
201,407
776
0.4%
46
203,324
1,138
0.6%
47
203,643
0
0.0%
48
202,586
0
0.0%
49
203,558
0
0.0%
50
202,082
32
0.0%
51
203,508
1,881
0.9%
52
201,532
259
0.1%
53
199,548
3,936
2.0%
54
185,290
103
0.1%
55
185,357
868
0.5%
56
199,975
32
0.0%
57
186,531
0
0.0%
58
189,132
2,265
1.2%
59
195,458
7,807
4.0%
60
185,732
939
0.5%
61
202,295
900
0.4%
62
186,794
2,909
1.6%
63
202,319
0
0.0%
64
192,862
1,037
0.5%
65
202,249
0
0.0%
66
198,718
0
0.0%
67
200,888
0
0.0%
68
193,744
2,539
1.3%
69
185,518
4,584
2.5%
70
185,574
0
0.0%
71
191,317
5,815
3.0%
72
186,421
5,994
3.2%
73
201,161
225
0.1%
74
203,239
8,569
4.2%
75
200,505
441
0.2%
76
198,548
2,167
1.1%
77
203,921
595
0.3%
78
203,786
849
0.4%
79
201,379
664
0.3%
80
192,601
4,948
2.6%
81
184,670
944
0.5%
82
187,676
1,846
1.0%
83
185,969
6,357
3.4%
84
187,524
1,164
0.6%
85
202,964
296
0.1%
86
185,308
1,288
0.7%
87
187,448
5,771
3.1%
88
186,059
5,018
2.7%
89
194,270
0
0.0%
90
202,379
0
0.0%
91
186,760
0
0.0%
92
188,309
0
0.0%
93
195,785
0
0.0%
94
185,756
26
0.0%
95
203,993
5,793
2.8%
96
188,593
227
0.1%
97
189,469
0
0.0%
98
184,798
0
0.0%
99
194,917
1,609
0.8%
100
184,691
4,114
2.2%
101
189,881
0
0.0%
102
187,686
0
0.0%
103
184,639
16
0.0%
104
185,500
363
0.2%
105
191,644
10
0.0%
106
191,093
0
0.0%
107
184,603
0
0.0%
108
187,178
0
0.0%
109
184,600
4,342
2.4%
110
184,614
0
0.0%
111
184,755
0
0.0%
112
185,204
30
0.0%
113
185,211
0
0.0%
114
184,649
53
0.0%
115
198,565
7
0.0%
116
199,721
0
0.0%
117
203,057
2,078
1.0%
118
203,245
219
0.1%
119
201,534
64
0.0%
120
200,262
8
0.0%
121
203,209
0
0.0%
122
203,881
0
0.0%
123
197,123
3,550
1.8%
124
194,508
0
0.0%
125
202,784
0
0.0%
126
188,805
0
0.0%
127
202,964
0
0.0%
128
192,949
0
0.0%
129
201,896
0
0.0%
130
192,603
0
0.0%
131
202,667
0
0.0%
132
196,710
0
0.0%
133
189,647
0
0.0%
134
197,013
0
0.0%
135
203,172
0
0.0%
136
203,587
0
0.0%
137
196,097
0
0.0%
138
198,419
0
0.0%
139
202,150
0
0.0%
140
186,188
0
0.0%
141
201,495
796
0.4%
142
193,612
10,465
5.4%
143
200,529
0
0.0%
144
203,960
2
0.0%
145
188,902
673
0.4%
146
192,277
0
0.0%
147
201,033
374
0.2%
148
203,639
0
0.0%
149
198,740
0
0.0%
150
195,678
0
0.0%
Table notes
Total Population
Total population reported for all blocks in the district (as redistricted in 2022). Block populations reported for the 2020 Census in the PL 94-171 redistricting summary files Table P1.
Incarcerated Population
Total incarcerated population reported in all blocks in the district (as redistricted in 2022), based on the incarcerated population in group quarters reported for the 2020 Census in the PL 94-171 redistricting summary files Table P5.
Percent of the District that is Incarcerated
This is the number of incarcerated people counted in the district divided by the total population of the district.
Correctional Facility Populations: To calculate the percentage of each district’s population that was in correctional facilities, we used the redistricting data (PL 94-171) from the 2020 Census. Table P1 provides the total population for each Census block and Table P5 provides the number of incarcerated people for each Census Block. Notably, this approach includes people in all kinds of correctional facilities, including state prisons, federal prisons, private prisons, local jails, halfway houses, etc.
Identifying specific facilities: Table P5 provides the population of correctional facilities without distinguishing between state, federal, or private facilities and it is published for each Census block. Census blocks do not necessarily translate directly to facilities, as some facilities are counted in multiple blocks and some blocks contain multiple facilities. To aid redistricting officials and advocates with using this data, the Prison Policy Initiative maintains a Facility Locator Tool that contains annotations of most of the Census blocks in the country that contain correctional facilities. These annotations rely on publicly-available data to identify facility names and types in each of these blocks.
Calculating how many Texas residents are held by the Bureau of Prisons:
Our calculations on the number of people in federal prisons in each state are based on data provided by the Bureau of Prisons in response to our periodic Freedom of Information Act requests.
How this report quantifies prison gerrymandering compared to other analyses: There are a few ways to calculate the impact of prison gerrymandering, so other researchers may have used slightly different approaches that generate slightly different numbers for the same general problem. For example, some analyses only focus on prisons and exclude jail populations. That choice makes sense when looking at state-level policies and state districts because people in jails are very likely to also live in the legislative district where the jail is located. However, for this analysis, we included jails as well as state correctional facilities because 28% of the people held in Texas jails are held for state and federal authorities. Still other approaches, such as that taken by the Redistricting Data Hub, are based on estimates of incarcerated people’s home addresses. That approach adds an additional level of precision for counting people held in state facilities because it seeks to not only address where these people were counted incorrectly — which accounts for the bulk of prison gerrymandering’s population distortion — but to also estimate where they should have been counted. Unfortunately, this approach isn’t able to reflect where people in federal facilities, most jails, and private facilities are from. And so, for simplicity, this report doesn’t use that approach.
Each of these approaches has its own merits, and none are universally better than others; they all highlight different aspects of how prison gerrymandering skews population numbers, and each has its own use. The complexities inherent in the current patchwork approach to identifying and solving prison gerrymandering point to the need for the Census Bureau to count incarcerated people at home in the first place in order to provide a comprehensive solution to prison gerrymandering.
Cities: Big Spring, Brownfield, Bryan, Henderson, Huntsville, Karnes City, Mineral Wells, Post, Victoria
School districts: Fort Stockton Independent School District, Marlin Independent School District
Unfortunately we did not have the resources to update this comprehensive research for all the local governments in the 2020 round of redistricting; our experience, however, has shown that once a community has ended prison gerrymandering, they rarely undo that progress. Any readers that would like to update this research for the current city, county, or school board districts — in their community or elsewhere in the state — will likely find our documentation for doing this research helpful. ↩
In our research conducted into the previous (2010) round of redistricting, we discovered notable prison gerrymandering in 9 cities and counties, however we only updated this research for Lockhart for the 2020 round of redistricting. The counties and cities where prison gerrymandering resulted in skewed representation in their local government districts after the 2010 Census are: Brazos, Caldwell, Gray, Jefferson, Limestone, Parker counties, and the cities of Lockhart and Marlin. ↩
Nationwide we identified over 200 local governments that avoided prison gerrymandering after the 2000 and 2010 Censuses (decades when zero and two, respectively, states adjusted their redistricting data to count people at home). This decade we limited the scope of our research but still found an additional 21 local governments scattered across 10 states that started doing so after the 2020 Census despite those states continuing to use unadjusted data for state-level districts. ↩
Everyone in Vermont is supposed to have an equal voice in their government’s decisions, but an outdated and misguided Census Bureau policy that counts incarcerated people in the wrong place gives a few residents of the state a megaphone. It is a problem known as prison gerrymandering, and Vermont lawmakers can fix it.
Vermont blindly follows outdated bureaucratic federal policy
Every ten years, when the Census Bureau conducts its official tally of the nation’s population, it incorrectly counts incarcerated people as residents of prison cells rather than in their home communities. This is despite the fact that they usually are not from the prison town, have no family or social ties there, likely won’t stay there for long, and state residence law says they’re not residents there. Furthermore, Vermont residents don’t lose the right to vote while incarcerated, and are required to vote by absentee ballot at their home address. So when state officials then use Census data in the legislative redistricting process, incarcerated people are counted toward the constituent total of one district, but vote for representatives in another.
Using Census data to draw legislative districts creates a mismatch between Census data and Vermont law, inadvertently inflating the populations of districts that contain prions — in violation of constitutional principles of equal representation. This gives residents of state legislative districts that contain correctional facilities a particularly loud voice in government, allowing them to have an outsized influence on debates about school funding, housing, medical care, and more, at the expense of nearly every other person in the state.
To ensure equal representation, states across the country have taken steps to fix this problem that the Census Bureau created. But, Vermont is one of the remaining states still suffering from this “prison gerrymandering.” While the 2030 Census count is still years away, Vermont needs to act now to avoid prison gerrymandering the next time it redraws its districts.
Prison gerrymandering puts one Vermont district above all others
In Vermont, residents of six House of Representatives districts are given a louder voice in government as a result of prison gerrymandering.
The six prison-gerrymandered House of Representatives districts in Vermont:
These six districts contain Vermont’s main correctional facilities. For a list of all districts, including population deviations, see the Appendix
District
Notable facilities
Percent of the district that is incarcerated
Orleans-2
Northern State Correctional Facility
8.1%
Franklin-3
Northwest State Correctional Facility
4.3%
Windsor-3
Southern State Correctional Facility
3.4%
Rutland-7
Marble Valley Regional Correctional Facility
2.42%
Chittenden-11
Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility
2.3%
Caledonia-Essex
Northeast Correctional Complex
1.3%
Most notably, the state counted people at the Northern State Correctional Facility as if they were residents of District Orleans-2. Those 360 people make up over 8% of the district’s population.
That means that just 92 residents of the Orleans-2 District have as much political clout as 100 residents in a typical district. That imbalance in representation comes from the state choosing to redistrict based on Census numbers that don’t match the reality of where people live.
The Census counted people incarcerated in those facilities as if they were residents of the facility location, even though state correctional facilities regularly contain people who are incarcerated far from home, have no ties to the communities where the facilities are located, and are moved regularly between facilities for administrative convenience. Simply put, being incarcerated in a specific facility doesn’t make someone a resident of the surrounding district.
Prison gerrymandering disproportionately harms Vermont’s Black and Native residents
Prison gerrymandering reduces the political power of nearly all Vermont residents by allowing a handful of districts with large correctional facilities to claim residents from all over the state. It particularly harms Black and Native people and enshrines the racial inequities of mass incarceration into the state’s legislative districts.
In Vermont, like across the country, mass incarceration has a disproportionate impact along racial lines. In Vermont, Black and Native American residents are incarcerated at significantly higher rates and, therefore, are counted in the wrong place more often than Vermont’s white residents.
Black residents make up just over 1% of the state population, but a whopping 10% of people in prisons. Native residents make up less than a quarter of one percent of the State’s population, but 2% of people in prisons.
The racial impact of prison gerrymandering is so strong that, for example, 42% of Black people, and 28% of Native Americans counted in State House Orleans-2 were actually behind bars in the Northern State Correctional Facility, rather than living in the community. And this district isn’t alone. For example, in Franklin-3, 31% Black people and 29% of Native Americans were counted at the Northwest State Correctional Facility, and in the Caledonia Essex District, 26% of Native Americans were counted at the Northeast Correctional Complex.
Vermont’s disproportionate incarceration of Black and Native residents, combined with the Census Bureau counting incarcerated people as if they live at the facility location, means the state is effectively silencing the voices of a large portion of the state’s Black and Native residents.
Vermont law says a prison cell is not a residence. Census Bureau policy disagrees
Not only does the Census Bureau’s redistricting data cause prison gerrymandering, it also doesn’t comply with Vermont’s law. The state’s statutes explicitly state that being incarcerated doesn’t change a person’s residence:
“A person shall not gain or lose a residence solely by reason of presence or absence… while confined in a prison or correctional institution.”
Instead of following state law, though, the Census Bureau follows its own “residence rule” to choose where to count incarcerated people — where they “live and sleep most of the time.” But it doesn’t even follow this rule properly when it comes to counting incarcerated people.
The Census Bureau counts incarcerated people at the location of the facility where they happen to be held on Census Day under the mistaken belief that that is where incarcerated people “live and sleep most of the time.” The facts, however, do not support its interpretation of its own definition of residence. It is well-established that in the modern era of mass incarceration, incarcerated people do not “live and sleep most of the time” at the facility where they are held on any given day (including Census Day). Nationally, 75% of people serve time in more than one prison facility, and 12% of people serve time in at least five facilities before returning home.
Nationally, state and local governments are addressing the problem, but Vermont is lagging behind
Over the course of the last few decades, a growing number of states and over 200 local governments have taken action on their own to fix this problem. Nearly half of the US population now lives in a place that corrects redistricting data they receive from the Census to avoid prison gerrymandering.
States that have ended prison gerrymandering on their own include deep “blue” states like California, “purple” states like Maine and Pennsylvania, and deep “red” states like Montana — where prison gerrymandering-reform legislation received wide bipartisan support. But Vermont is falling behind and letting the state’s democracy be skewed by an outdated federal system.
2030 may seem far away, but other states have learned that the earlier that reforms are put in place, the less expensive, easier to produce, and more accurate the final redistricting data becomes. Every state has a different legislative approach to ending prison gerrymandering, but as a practical matter, this model bill, prepared by a coalition of civil rights, voting rights, and criminal justice organizations, is a great place to start. It provides clear guidance on how this data should be collected, by whom, and how it will be used for the redistricting process.
The Census Bureau is unlikely to change its policies about how to count incarcerated people in time for the 2030 Census, meaning that unless Vermont acts quickly, the state will once again be driven into prison-gerrymandering its legislative districts.
Vermont needs to end prison gerrymandering now.
About the Data
Correctional Facility Populations: To calculate the percentage of each district’s population that was in correctional facilities, we used the redistricting data (PL 94-171) from the 2020 Census. Table P1 provides the total population for each Census block and Table P5 provides the number of incarcerated people for each Census Block. Notably, this approach includes people in all kinds of correctional facilities, including state prisons, federal prisons, private prisons, local jails, halfway houses, etc.
Identifying specific facilities: Table P5 provides the population of correctional facilities without distinguishing between state, federal, or private facilities and it is published for each Census block. Census blocks do not necessarily translate directly to facilities, as some facilities are counted in multiple blocks and some blocks contain multiple facilities. To aid redistricting officials and advocates with using this data, the Prison Policy Initiative maintains a Facility Locator Tool that contains annotations of most of the Census blocks in the country that contain correctional facilities. These annotations rely on publicly-available data to identify facility names and types in each of these blocks.
How this report quantifies prison gerrymandering compared to other analyses: There are a few ways to calculate the impact of prison gerrymandering, so other researchers may have used slightly different approaches that generate slightly different numbers for the same general problem. For example, some analyses only focus on prisons and exclude jail populations. That choice makes sense when looking at state-level policies and state districts because people in jails are very likely to also live in the legislative district where the jail is located. However, for this analysis, we included jails as well as state correctional facilities because Vermont has a unified prison and jail system. Still other approaches, such as that taken by the Redistricting Data Hub, are based on estimates of incarcerated people’s home addresses. That approach adds an additional level of precision for counting people held in state facilities because it seeks to not only address where these people were counted incorrectly — which accounts for the bulk of prison gerrymandering’s population distortion — but to also estimate where they should have been counted. Unfortunately, this approach isn’t able to reflect where people in federal facilities, most jails, and private facilities are from. And so, for simplicity, this report doesn’t use that approach.
Each of these approaches has its own merits, and none are universally better than others; they all highlight different aspects of how prison gerrymandering skews population numbers, and each has its own use. The complexities inherent in the current patchwork approach to identifying and solving prison gerrymandering point to the need for the Census Bureau to count incarcerated people at home in the first place in order to provide a comprehensive solution to prison gerrymandering.
Total population reported for all blocks in the district (as redistricted in 2022). Block populations reported for the 2020 Census in the PL 94-171 redistricting summary files Table P1.
2020 Census Incarcerated Population
Total incarcerated population reported in all blocks in the district (as redistricted in 2022), based on the incarcerated population in group quarters reported for the 2020 Census in the PL 94-171 redistricting summary files Table P5.
Percent of the District that is Incarcerated
This is the number of incarcerated people counted in the district divided by the total population of the district.
Official District Population Deviation
The difference from the ideal district size based on Census data.
Actual Deviation
The difference from the ideal district size, accounting for the impact of prison gerrymandering and the intended population deviation based on Census data.
Everyone in Kentucky is supposed to have an equal voice in their government’s decisions, but an outdated and misguided Census Bureau policy that counts incarcerated people in the wrong place gives a few residents of the state a megaphone. It is a problem known as prison gerrymandering, and Kentucky lawmakers can fix it.
Kentucky blindly follows outdated bureaucratic federal policy
Every ten years, when the Census Bureau conducts its official tally of the nation’s population, it incorrectly counts incarcerated people as residents of prison cells rather than in their home communities. This is despite the fact that they usually are not from the prison town, have no family or social ties there, likely won’t stay there for long, and state residence law says they’re not residents there. When state officials then use that incorrect Census data in the legislative redistricting process, they inadvertently inflate the populations of those areas — in violation of constitutional principles of equal representation. This gives residents of state legislative districts that contain correctional facilities a particularly loud voice in government, allowing them to have an outsized influence on debates about income taxes, healthcare access, educational requirements, and more, at the expense of nearly every other person in the state.
To ensure equal representation, states across the country have taken steps to fix this problem that the Census Bureau created. But, Kentucky is one of the remaining states still suffering from this “prison gerrymandering.” While the 2030 Census count is still years away, Kentucky needs to act now to avoid prison gerrymandering the next time it redraws its districts.
Prison gerrymandering significantly distorts Kentucky’s state legislative districts
In Kentucky, there are two state House districts that powerfully illustrate how prisons distort district populations and give some residents a louder voice in government as a result of prison gerrymandering.
In these two House of Representatives districts — districts 59 and 99 — correctional facilities account for a significant portion of the population. In District 59, for example, correctional facilities make up 8% of the population. That means that just 92 residents of that district have as much political clout as 100 residents in other districts. That imbalance in representation comes from the state choosing to redistrict based on Census numbers that don’t match the reality of where people live.
Two most prison-gerrymandered House of Representatives districts in Kentucky
These two districts are the most prison-gerrymandered in Kentucky. For details on all districts, see the Appendix.
District
District Location
Notable facilities
Percent of the district that is incarcerated
59
Part of Oldham County
Luther Luckett Correctional Complex, Kentucky State Reformatory and Roederer Correctional Complex, Oldham County Detention Center
8%
99
Rowan, Elliot, Morgan Counties
Rowan County Detention Center, Little Sandy Correctional Complex, Eastern Kentucky Correctional Complex
7%
These two districts are the most prison-gerrymandered state legislative districts in Kentucky. Large chunks of their population are made up of prisons that contain people from other parts of the state, instead of local residents. Adding to the problem, nearly half of people incarcerated in county detention centers and jails are held for state and federal agencies, meaning that they come from all over the state and the country.
In Kentucky, state and local facilities regularly contain people who are incarcerated far from home, have no ties to the communities where the facilities are located, and are moved regularly between facilities for administrative convenience. Simply put, being incarcerated in a specific facility doesn’t make someone a resident of the surrounding district.
Prison gerrymandering disproportionately harms Kentucky’s Black residents
Prison gerrymandering reduces the political power of nearly all Kentucky residents by allowing a few districts with large correctional facilities to claim residents from all over the state. It particularly harms Black people and enshrines the racial inequities of mass incarceration into the state’s legislative districts.
In Kentucky, like across the country, mass incarceration has a disproportionate impact along racial lines. In Kentucky, Black residents are incarcerated at significantly higher rates and, therefore, are counted in the wrong place more often than Kentucky’s white residents. Black residents make up 8% of the state population, but 21% of people in prisons and 18% of people in jails.
The racial impact of prison gerrymandering is so strong in Kentucky that 66% of the Black people counted in District 99 were actually behind bars, rather than living in the community.
Counting incarcerated people in the wrong place adds up. As a result, the Census Bureau policies are effectively silencing the voices of a large portion of Kentucky’s Black residents.
Kentucky law says a prison cell is not a residence. Census Bureau policy disagrees
Not only does the Census Bureau’s redistricting data cause prison gerrymandering, it also doesn’t comply with Kentucky law. The state’s statute on voting1 residence — determining where someone is represented — is clear that you continue being a resident of your home while incarcerated, and do not become a resident of the facility location:
(1) A voter’s residence shall be deemed to be at the place where his or her habitation is, and to which, when absent, he or she has the intention of returning;
(2) A voter shall not lose his or her residence by absence for temporary purposes merely; nor shall he or she obtain a residence by being in a county or precinct for such temporary purposes, without the intention of making that county or precinct his or her home.
(Kentucky Annotated Revised Statute § 116.035.)
Being held in a correctional institution simply does not change someone’s residence because incarcerated people are only held temporarily and don’t intend to stay there.
A correctional facility may seem permanent, but staying at one is temporary. Not only are incarcerated people regularly moved between facilities while incarcerated,2 most people don’t generally stay in the area of the prison after their release.3 So, under Kentucky law, they aren’t residents of the facility location.
Instead of following state law, though, the Census Bureau follows its own “residence rule” to choose where to count incarcerated people — where they “live and sleep most of the time.” But it doesn’t even follow this rule properly when it comes to counting incarcerated people.
The Census Bureau counts incarcerated people at the location of the facility where they happen to be held on Census Day under the mistaken belief that that is where incarcerated people “live and sleep most of the time.” The facts, however, do not support its interpretation of its own definition of residence. It is well-established that in the modern era of mass incarceration, incarcerated people do not “live and sleep most of the time” at the facility where they are held on any given day, including Census Day.
Representation in local government is also harmed by prison gerrymandering
The impact of prison gerrymandering is most clearly visible at the small scale: county governments. With smaller districts at the local government level, even a single facility can have a tremendous impact on the redistricting process.
For example, when Clay County drew its Fiscal Court Magistrate districts after the 2010 Census — those maps are still in effect — it included the people counted at FCI Manchester as if they were residents of the county. That means the 1,619 people counted at the federal facility were counted as part of Magistrate District 2, even though it is unlikely that any were residents of Clay County at all.4 As a result, 55 people in District 2 were given the same political power on the Fiscal Court as 100 people in every other district.
Including the federal prison population as part of District 2 makes even less sense when you consider that by the 2020 Census, the facility population had dropped to 1,044 people, meaning that the district is based in part on out-of-town residents and in part on empty prison cells.5
Recognizing these Census-caused problems, many places in Kentucky that have significant correctional facility populations have already started taking matters into their own hands and rejecting the Bureau’s way of counting incarcerated people.
In the 2010 redistricting cycle, the Prison Policy Initiative found several Kentucky counties that have avoided prison gerrymandering to ensure their residents have equal representation in local government, notably: Casey, Lee, Marion, and McCreary Counties. 6
Kentucky’s local governments are not unique; facing these absurd distortions in representation, local governments across the country7 are taking matters into their own hands and rejecting the Bureau’s way of counting incarcerated people, even when states fail to act.
In Kentucky, like across the country, local governments have found that adjusting redistricting data to avoid prison gerrymandering is quite easy. However, the state should provide a more efficient and complete solution for its local governments. Although it is not fair that the state has to correct for this federal issue, the state is in a better position to take on that burden than each individual county government.
Nationally, state and local governments are addressing the problem, but the Kentucky legislature is lagging behind
Over the course of the last few decades, over 200 local governments and a growing number of states have taken action on their own to fix this problem. Nearly half of the US population now lives in a place that corrects redistricting data they receive from the Census to avoid prison gerrymandering.
States that have ended prison gerrymandering on their own include deep “blue” states like California, “purple” states like Maine and Pennsylvania, and deep “red” states like Montana — where prison gerrymandering-reform legislation received wide bipartisan support. But Kentucky is falling behind and letting the state’s democracy be skewed by an outdated federal system.
2030 may seem far away, but other states have learned that the earlier that reforms are put in place, the less expensive, easier to produce, and more accurate the final redistricting data becomes. Every state has a different legislative approach to ending prison gerrymandering, but as a practical matter, this model bill, prepared by a coalition of civil rights, voting rights, and criminal justice organizations, is a great place to start. It provides clear guidance on how this data should be collected, by whom, and how it will be used for the redistricting process.
The Census Bureau is unlikely to change its policies about how to count incarcerated people in time for the 2030 Census, meaning that unless Kentucky acts quickly, the state will once again be driven into prison-gerrymandering its legislative districts.
Kentucky needs to end prison gerrymandering now.
About the Data
Correctional Facility Populations: To calculate the percentage of each district’s population that was in correctional facilities, we used the redistricting data (PL 94-171) from the 2020 Census. Table P1 provides the total population for each Census block and Table P5 provides the number of incarcerated people for each Census Block. Notably, this approach includes people in all kinds of correctional facilities, including state prisons, federal prisons, private prisons, local jails, halfway houses, etc.
Identifying specific facilities: Table P5 provides the population of correctional facilities without distinguishing between state, federal, or private facilities and it is published for each Census block. Census blocks do not necessarily translate directly to facilities, as some facilities are counted in multiple blocks and some blocks contain multiple facilities. To aid redistricting officials and advocates with using this data, the Prison Policy Initiative maintains a Facility Locator Tool that contains annotations of most of the Census blocks in the country that contain correctional facilities. These annotations rely on publicly-available data to identify facility names and types in each of these blocks.
Calculating how many Kentucky residents are held by the Bureau of Prisons:
Our calculations on the number of people in federal prisons in each state are based on data provided by the Bureau of Prisons in response to our periodic Freedom of Information Act requests.
How this report quantifies prison gerrymandering compared to other analyses: There are a few ways to calculate the impact of prison gerrymandering, so other researchers may have used slightly different approaches that generate slightly different numbers for the same general problem:
For example, some analyses only focus on prisons and exclude jail populations. That choice makes sense when looking at state-level policies and state districts because people in jails are very likely to also live in the legislative district where the jail is located. However, for this analysis, we included jails as well as state correctional facilities because nearly half (49%) of the people held in Kentucky jails are held for state and federal authorities.
Still other approaches, such as that taken by the Redistricting Data Hub, are based on estimates of incarcerated people’s home addresses. That approach adds an additional level of precision for counting people held in state facilities because it seeks to not only address where these people were counted incorrectly — which accounts for the bulk of prison gerrymandering’s population distortion — but to also estimate where they should have been counted. Unfortunately, this approach isn’t able to reflect where people in federal facilities, most jails, and private facilities are from. And so, for simplicity, this report doesn’t use that approach.
Yet other analyses, such as that of ACLU of Kentucky’s 2024 report, focusing on how prison gerrymandering interacts with common safe harbor population guidelines in redistricting. Again, for simplicity, this report doesn’t use that approach.
Each of these approaches has its own merits, and none are universally better than others; they all highlight different aspects of how prison gerrymandering skews population numbers, and each has its own use. The complexities inherent in the current patchwork approach to identifying and solving prison gerrymandering point to the need for the Census Bureau to count incarcerated people at home in the first place in order to provide a comprehensive solution to prison gerrymandering.
Appendix: Correctional facility populations in Kentucky House of Representatives Districts, 2020 Census
State House District
Total Population
Incarcerated Population
Percent of the District that is Incarcerated
1
45,667
1,116
2.4%
2
43,865
107
0.2%
3
43,974
0
0.0%
4
45,423
352
0.8%
5
43,360
137
0.3%
6
43,835
1,700
3.9%
7
46,996
140
0.3%
8
45,349
560
1.2%
9
43,420
0
0.0%
10
46,263
207
0.4%
11
44,793
602
1.3%
12
44,827
499
1.1%
13
44,400
626
1.4%
14
44,783
23
0.1%
15
43,299
1,215
2.8%
16
44,107
215
0.5%
17
46,743
0
0.0%
18
43,359
584
1.3%
19
46,444
0
0.0%
20
46,982
544
1.2%
21
46,415
68
0.1%
22
46,693
462
1.0%
23
44,485
161
0.4%
24
45,262
255
0.6%
25
43,738
577
1.3%
26
42,935
0
0.0%
27
45,928
152
0.3%
28
46,957
0
0.0%
29
42,901
0
0.0%
30
45,907
0
0.0%
31
44,103
0
0.0%
32
46,570
0
0.0%
33
43,242
702
1.6%
34
47,020
0
0.0%
35
43,114
0
0.0%
36
44,411
0
0.0%
37
46,374
0
0.0%
38
46,333
0
0.0%
39
44,482
107
0.2%
40
43,888
62
0.1%
41
46,873
0
0.0%
42
44,505
123
0.3%
43
45,177
1,949
4.3%
44
43,749
0
0.0%
45
44,429
0
0.0%
46
45,444
0
0.0%
47
46,240
113
0.2%
48
43,653
0
0.0%
49
43,310
0
0.0%
50
46,738
122
0.3%
51
45,604
458
1.0%
52
47,241
1,622
3.4%
53
43,342
0
0.0%
54
46,555
1,705
3.7%
55
43,639
0
0.0%
56
43,547
111
0.3%
57
42,866
211
0.5%
58
45,613
193
0.4%
59
47,048
3,570
7.6%
60
47,096
0
0.0%
61
44,728
208
0.5%
62
43,711
89
0.2%
63
43,172
0
0.0%
64
46,301
0
0.0%
65
44,112
20
0.0%
66
45,619
479
1.1%
67
43,232
540
1.2%
68
43,232
0
0.0%
69
45,758
0
0.0%
70
46,405
121
0.3%
71
43,069
78
0.2%
72
42,871
4
0.0%
73
43,285
215
0.5%
74
46,977
164
0.3%
75
46,453
0
0.0%
76
47,116
0
0.0%
77
47,039
1,828
3.9%
78
43,133
0
0.0%
79
46,590
0
0.0%
80
43,082
95
0.2%
81
43,508
73
0.2%
82
43,008
275
0.6%
83
42,986
536
1.2%
84
46,242
192
0.4%
85
46,678
227
0.5%
86
43,495
324
0.7%
87
43,391
599
1.4%
88
44,987
606
1.3%
89
46,337
1,024
2.2%
90
47,011
1,972
4.2%
91
46,852
460
1.0%
92
45,945
0
0.0%
93
44,624
0
0.0%
94
46,649
96
0.2%
95
46,639
456
1.0%
96
46,190
215
0.5%
97
44,318
1,480
3.3%
98
46,965
119
0.3%
99
45,742
3,049
6.7%
100
47,068
1,452
3.1%
Table notes
Total Population
Total population reported for all blocks in the district (as redistricted in 2022). Block populations reported for the 2020 Census in the PL 94-171 redistricting summary files Table P1.
Incarcerated Population
Total incarcerated population reported in all blocks in the district (as redistricted in 2022), based on the incarcerated population in group quarters reported for the 2020 Census in the PL 94-171 redistricting summary files Table P5.
Percent of the District that is Incarcerated
This is the number of incarcerated people counted in the district divided by the total population of the district.
Voters include incarcerated people, many of whom are incarcerated while awaiting trial and retain the right to vote. It may be surprising, but many people incarcerated in Kentucky are still eligible to vote, and when they do vote they are required to vote by absentee ballot with their home address. ↩
Only 1.3% of people incarcerated in Federal Bureau of Prisons facilities, such as the FCI Manchester come from Kentycky. That means, statistically, only about 21 people that the Census Bureau counted at FCI Manchester are Kentucky residents, and given that the state has 120 counties, and Clay County isn’t even one of the large ones, it’s unlikely that anyone incarcerated at FCI Manchester is a resident of Clay County, let alone Magistrate District 2 specifically. ↩
Unfortunately we did not have the resources to update this comprehensive research for all the local governments in the 2020 round of redistricting, although the ACLU of Kentucky did find prison gerrymandering in Elliot, Floyd, Lyon, Morgan, Muthenberg, Oldham, and Shelby Counties as described in the “Local Districts” table on pdf page 4 of their 2024 report, Prison Gerrymandering in Kentucky. Any readers that would like to update this research for the current city, county, or school board districts – in their community or elsewhere in the state – will likely find our documentation for doing this research helpful. ↩
Nationwide we identified over 200 local governments that avoided prison gerrymandering after the 2000 and 2010 Censuses (decades when zero and two, respectively, states adjusted their redistricting data to count people at home). This decade we limited the scope of our research but still found an additional 21 local governments scattered across 10 states that started doing so after the 2020 Census despite those states continuing to use unadjusted data for state-level districts. ↩
Everyone in Michigan is supposed to have an equal voice in their government’s decisions, but an outdated and misguided Census Bureau policy that counts incarcerated people in the wrong place gives a few residents of the state a megaphone. It is a problem known as prison gerrymandering, and Michigan lawmakers can fix it.
Michigan blindly follows outdated bureaucratic federal policy
Every ten years, when the Census Bureau conducts its official tally of the nation’s population, it incorrectly counts incarcerated people as residents of prison cells rather than in their home communities. This is despite the fact that they usually are not from the prison town, have no family or social ties there, likely won’t stay there for long, and state residence law says they’re not residents there. When state officials then use that incorrect Census data in the legislative redistricting process, they inadvertently inflate the populations of those areas – in violation of constitutional principles of equal representation. This gives residents of state legislative districts that contain correctional facilities a particularly loud voice in government, allowing them to have an outsized influence on debates about minimum wage, gun regulation, election rights, and more, at the expense of nearly every other person in the state.
To ensure equal representation, states across the country have taken steps to fix this problem that the Census Bureau created. But, Michigan is one of the remaining states still suffering from this “prison gerrymandering.” While the 2030 Census count is still years away, Michigan needs to act now to avoid prison gerrymandering the next time it redraws its districts.
Prison gerrymandering significantly distorts Michigan’s state legislative districts
In Michigan, there are three state House districts that powerfully illustrate how prisons distort district populations and give some residents a louder voice in government as a result of prison gerrymandering.
In Districts 78 and 46, for example, correctional facilities make up 7% of the population. That means that just 93 residents in those districts have as much political clout as 100 residents in any normal district. District 93 is close behind with more than 5% of its population being incarcerated.
The three most prison-gerrymandered House of Representatives districts in Michigan:
These three districts are the most prison-gerrymandered in Michigan. For details on all districts, see the Appendix
District
District Location
Notable facilities
Percent of the district that is incarcerated
78
Parts of Ionia, Kent, Eaton, and Barry Counties
Ionia Correctional Facility, Richard A. Handlon Correctional Facility, Bellamy Creek Correctional Facility, Michigan Reformatory
7.4%
46
Parts of Jackson and Washtenaw Counties
Charles Egeler Reception and Guidance, Cooper Street Correctional Facility, Parnall Correctional Facility, G. Robert Cotton Correctional Facility
7.0%
93
Parts of Saginaw, Gratiot, Montcalm, Ionia, and Clinton Counties
Carson City Correctional Facility
5.6%
In fact, one-third of all people incarcerated in Michigan are counted as residents of facilities in these three districts, despite the fact that incarcerated people come from every district in the state.1 That imbalance in representation comes from the state choosing to redistrict based on Census numbers that don’t match the reality of where people live.
The Census counted people incarcerated in those places as if they were residents of the facility location, even though state correctional facilities contain people who are incarcerated far from home, have no ties to the communities where the facilities are located, and are moved regularly between facilities for administrative convenience.2 Simply put, being incarcerated in a specific facility doesn’t make someone a resident of the surrounding district.
Prison gerrymandering disproportionately harms Michigan’s Black residents
Prison gerrymandering reduces the political power of nearly all Michigan residents by allowing a handful of districts with large correctional facilities to claim residents from all over the state. But prison gerrymandering particularly harms Black residents as it enshrines the racial inequities of mass incarceration into the state’s legislative districts.
In Michigan, like across the country, mass incarceration has a disproportionate impact along racial lines. In Michigan, Black residents are incarcerated at higher rates and, therefore, are counted in the wrong place more often than Michigan’s white residents.
The racial impact of prison gerrymandering is so strong that, for example, 88% of Black people counted in State House District 78 were actually behind bars, rather than living in the community.
Over half of the people incarcerated in Michigan’s prisons are Black. Black residents make up just 13% of the state population, but a whopping 51% of people in prisons and 36% of people in jails.
Additionally, 26% of the state’s incarcerated people come from Wayne County, even though the county only accounts for 18% of the state’s population.3
Counting incarcerated people in the wrong place adds up. Just in the three districts highlighted above, over 7,608 Black people were counted in the wrong place. This means that the Census Bureau policies are effectively silencing the voices of a large portion of the state’s Black residents.
Michigan law says a prison cell is not a residence. Census Bureau policy disagrees
Not only does the Census Bureau’s redistricting data cause prison gerrymandering, it also doesn’t comply with Michigan’s law. The state’s constitution explicitly states that being incarcerated doesn’t change a person’s residence:
“An elector shall not be deemed to have gained or lost a residence … while confined in a jail or prison.”
Michigan Compiled Laws §168.11(2).
Additionally, Michigan law also explicitly requires local governments to address prison populations in their own redistricting data. We explore this more deeply in the local government section, below.
Instead of following state law, though, the Census Bureau follows its own “residence rule” to choose where to count incarcerated people – where they “live and sleep most of the time.” But it doesn’t even follow this rule properly when it comes to counting incarcerated people.
The Census Bureau counts incarcerated people at the location of the facility where they happen to be held on Census Day under the mistaken belief that that is where incarcerated people “live and sleep most of the time.” The facts, however, do not support its interpretation of its own definition of residence. It is well-established that in the modern era of mass incarceration, incarcerated people do not “live and sleep most of the time” at the facility where they are held on any given day (including Census Day). Nationally, 75% of people serve time in more than one prison facility, and 12% of people serve time in at least five facilities before returning home.
Representation in local government is also harmed by prison gerrymandering
The impact of prison gerrymandering is even more visible at the small scale: in city and county governments. So much so that Michigan already requires local governments to exclude state prisons from their redistricting data when drawing county board of commissioners districts or city council wards.
Michigan’s statutes (MCL §46.404(g) for counties and §117.27a(5) for cities) specify that people incarcerated in state institutions who do not actually reside in that county or city shouldn’t be counted when drawing local government districts. These statutes protect Michigan residents from wildly distorted political power distribution – for example, in neighboring Wisconsin, there are three counties where prison populations make up more than half of a county commission district, giving the residents of the districts that contain the prisons twice the influence over county affairs compared to other county residents.
An unfortunate oversight, however, is that these laws fail to account for local jails and, even more importantly, the federal facility (FCI Milan).
The experience of Washtenaw County shows a county working to avoid prison gerrymandering under the state law but being prevented by that same statute from entirely solving the problem. Washtenaw has four correctional facilities within its borders: two state facilities (Camp Cassidy and Hurton Valley), a federal facility (FCI Milan), and the Washtenaw County Jail. The county excluded the state facilities, as required by law, but was left with the jail and FCI Milan skewing its redistricting data. There were 231 people counted at the jail, not enough to significantly affect a roughly 40,000-person district. But the 1,573 people counted at FCI Milan accounted for 4% of County Commissioner District 3. Meaning that every 96 people in District 3 have the same voice in county government as 100 people in the other districts.
Michigan has taken important first steps in requiring that local governments avoid prison gerrymandering, but it should make its solution more comprehensive by extending it to apply to federal and local facilities. Or, even better, the state should provide a more efficient and complete solution for its local governments by counting incarcerated people at home and sharing that redistricting data with cities and counties. While it is not fair that the state has to correct for this federal issue, the state is in a better position to take on that burden than each individual city.4
Nationally, state and local governments are addressing the problem, but Michigan is lagging behind
Over the last few decades, more than 200 local governments and a growing number of states have taken action on their own to fix this problem. Nearly half of the US population now lives in a place that corrects redistricting data they receive from the Census to avoid prison gerrymandering.
States that have ended prison gerrymandering on their own include deep “blue” states like California, “purple” states like Maine and Pennsylvania, and deep “red” states like Montana — where prison gerrymandering-reform legislation received wide bipartisan support. But Michigan is falling behind and letting the state’s democracy be skewed by an outdated federal system.
2030 may seem far away, but other states have learned that the earlier that reforms are put in place, the less expensive, easier to produce, and more accurate the final redistricting data becomes. Every state has a different legislative approach to ending prison gerrymandering, but as a practical matter, this model bill, prepared by a coalition of civil rights, voting rights, and criminal justice organizations, is a great place to start. It provides clear guidance on how this data should be collected, by whom, and how it will be used for the redistricting process. And Michigan has already taken its first steps, with Senate Bill 494 in the 2023 regular session. The bill nearly made it across the finish line, but died during the session’s closing day.5
The Census Bureau is unlikely to change its policies about how to count incarcerated people in time for the 2030 Census, meaning that unless Michigan acts quickly, the state will once again be driven into prison-gerrymandering their legislative districts.
Michigan needs to end prison gerrymandering now.
About the Data
Correctional Facility Populations: To calculate the percentage of each district’s population that was in correctional facilities, we used the redistricting data (PL 94-171) from the 2020 Census. Table P1 provides the total population for each Census block and Table P5 provides the number of incarcerated people for each Census Block. Notably, this approach includes people in all kinds of correctional facilities, including state prisons, federal prisons, private prisons, local jails, halfway houses, etc.
Identifying specific facilities: Table P5 provides the population of correctional facilities without distinguishing between state, federal, or private facilities and it is published for each Census block. Census blocks do not necessarily translate directly to facilities, as some facilities are counted in multiple blocks and some blocks contain multiple facilities. To aid redistricting officials and advocates with using this data, the Prison Policy Initiative maintains a Facility Locator Tool that contains annotations of most of the Census blocks in the country that contain correctional facilities. These annotations rely on publicly-available data to identify facility names and types in each of these blocks.
Calculating how many Michigan residents are held by the Bureau of Prisons:
Our calculations on the number of people in federal prisons in each state are based on data provided by the Bureau of Prisons in response to our periodic Freedom of Information Act requests.
How this report quantifies prison gerrymandering compared to other analyses: There are a few ways to calculate the impact of prison gerrymandering, so other researchers may have used slightly different approaches that generate slightly different numbers for the same general problem. For example, some analyses only focus on prisons and exclude jail populations. That choice makes sense when looking at state-level policies and state districts because people in jails are very likely to also live in the legislative district where the jail is located. However, for this analysis, we included jails as well as state correctional facilities for two reasons: because State House districts often split county lines in Michigan, and over 6% of the people held in Michigan jails are held for state and federal authorities. Still other approaches, such as that taken by the Redistricting Data Hub, are based on estimates of incarcerated people’s home addresses. That approach adds an additional level of precision for counting people held in state facilities because it seeks to not only address where these people were counted incorrectly – which accounts for the bulk of prison gerrymandering’s population distortion – but to also estimate where they should have been counted. Unfortunately, this approach isn’t able to reflect where people in federal facilities, most jails, and private facilities are from. And so, for simplicity, this report doesn’t use that approach.
Each of these approaches has its own merits, and none are universally better than others; they all highlight different aspects of how prison gerrymandering skews population numbers, and each has its own use. The complexities inherent in the current patchwork approach to identifying and solving prison gerrymandering point to the need for the Census Bureau to count incarcerated people at home in the first place in order to provide a comprehensive solution to prison gerrymandering.
Correctional facility populations in Michigan House of Representatives Districts, 2020 Census
State House District
Total Population
Incarcerated Population
Percent of the District that is Incarcerated
1
91,856
0
0.0%
2
89,622
18
0.0%
3
93,531
6
0.0%
4
90,903
0
0.0%
5
92,744
9
0.0%
6
93,629
0
0.0%
7
92,948
368
0.4%
8
92,670
0
0.0%
9
90,818
34
0.0%
10
90,534
564
0.6%
11
91,145
0
0.0%
12
90,630
0
0.0%
13
90,393
0
0.0%
14
90,555
150
0.2%
15
92,301
0
0.0%
16
93,035
0
0.0%
17
90,737
0
0.0%
18
92,169
0
0.0%
19
90,931
0
0.0%
20
93,017
0
0.0%
21
93,876
0
0.0%
22
91,654
0
0.0%
23
90,719
18
0.0%
24
91,480
0
0.0%
25
90,562
0
0.0%
26
91,723
0
0.0%
27
90,457
0
0.0%
28
91,598
0
0.0%
29
92,583
17
0.0%
30
93,460
413
0.4%
31
92,978
1,573
1.7%
32
92,092
1,974
2.1%
33
92,730
231
0.2%
34
92,371
2,280
2.5%
35
93,023
1,469
1.6%
36
89,634
84
0.1%
37
91,456
0
0.0%
38
93,422
0
0.0%
39
90,270
0
0.0%
40
90,211
0
0.0%
41
91,872
39
0.0%
42
91,192
0
0.0%
43
92,518
169
0.2%
44
89,974
359
0.4%
45
90,612
0
0.0%
46
91,041
6,371
7.0%
47
91,302
0
0.0%
48
92,373
142
0.2%
49
93,247
331
0.4%
50
93,139
209
0.2%
51
91,507
0
0.0%
52
91,098
0
0.0%
53
93,056
1,012
1.1%
54
92,949
0
0.0%
55
91,805
0
0.0%
56
90,410
0
0.0%
57
89,693
0
0.0%
58
90,454
0
0.0%
59
89,336
0
0.0%
60
92,742
0
0.0%
61
93,156
536
0.6%
62
90,539
0
0.0%
63
90,638
0
0.0%
64
91,060
296
0.3%
65
92,892
1,345
1.4%
66
93,014
0
0.0%
67
92,816
997
1.1%
68
93,065
0
0.0%
69
91,698
0
0.0%
70
90,738
507
0.6%
71
91,966
85
0.1%
72
92,844
0
0.0%
73
91,543
239
0.3%
74
90,782
0
0.0%
75
93,554
57
0.1%
76
92,354
174
0.2%
77
92,594
0
0.0%
78
92,264
6,834
7.4%
79
90,952
0
0.0%
80
92,350
0
0.0%
81
91,516
674
0.7%
82
91,219
145
0.2%
83
91,341
0
0.0%
84
91,890
0
0.0%
85
90,127
0
0.0%
86
90,575
0
0.0%
87
91,376
3,991
4.4%
88
90,900
0
0.0%
89
93,134
0
0.0%
90
91,549
0
0.0%
91
91,350
104
0.1%
92
92,520
3,805
4.1%
93
89,410
4,966
5.6%
94
90,438
38
0.0%
95
91,439
144
0.2%
96
90,544
116
0.1%
97
93,159
1,492
1.6%
98
92,049
149
0.2%
99
89,375
111
0.1%
100
91,751
212
0.2%
101
92,604
1,505
1.6%
102
91,886
1,096
1.2%
103
93,426
135
0.1%
104
89,466
71
0.1%
105
89,541
107
0.1%
106
90,875
90,
0.1%
107
92,701
1,378
1.5%
108
89,366
2,739
3.1%
109
89,410
2,657
3.0%
110
90,788
113
0.1%
Table notes
Total Population
Total population reported for all blocks in the district (as redistricted in 2022). Block populations reported for the 2020 Census in the PL 94-171 redistricting summary files Table P1.
Incarcerated Population
Total incarcerated population reported in all blocks in the district (as redistricted in 2022), based on the incarcerated population in group quarters reported for the 2020 Census in the PL 94-171 redistricting summary files Table P5.
Percent of the District that is Incarcerated
This is the number of incarcerated people counted in the district divided by the total population of the district.
Even worse, some facilities don’t contain Michigan residents at all. FCI Milan, located in District 31, for example, is used by the Federal Bureau of Prisons to hold people from all over the country. And less than 2% of the Bureau of Prisons population comes from Michigan, which means out of the 1,573 people held by the Bureau of Prisons at FCI Milan, only about 30 people are likely Michigan residents. And of those 30 Michigan residents, it’s unlikely that even one person would be an actual resident of District 31. ↩
Wayne County, which contains Detroit, is home to nearly 40% of Michigan’s Black residents. And although the state does not keep records of where incarcerated people live, we were able to use sentencing data as an estimate of where incarcerated people come from. We received the sentencing county data courtesy of the Redistricting Data Hub, which obtained it through a Freedom of Information request from the Michigan DOC. ↩
In most cases, adjusting redistricting data to avoid prison gerrymandering is quite easy for local governments. Outside of Michigan, local governments are taking matters into their own hands and rejecting the Bureau’s way of counting incarcerated people, even in states that fail to act. Nationwide we identified over 200 local governments that avoided prison gerrymandering after the 2000 and 2010 Censuses (decades when zero and two, respectively, states adjusted their redistricting data to count people at home). This decade we limited the scope of our research but still found an additional 21 local governments scattered across 10 states that started doing so after the 2020 Census despite those states continuing to use unadjusted data for state-level districts. ↩
The bill passed the Senate and died in the House in the chaotic final hours of the legislative session. ↩
Everyone in Oregon is supposed to have an equal voice in their government’s decisions, but an outdated and misguided Census Bureau policy that counts incarcerated people in the wrong place gives a few residents of the state a megaphone. It is a problem known as prison gerrymandering, and Oregon lawmakers can fix it.
Oregon blindly follows outdated bureaucratic federal policy
Every ten years, when the Census Bureau conducts its official tally of the nation’s population, it incorrectly counts incarcerated people as residents of prison cells rather than in their home communities. This is despite the fact that they usually are not from the prison town, have no family or social ties there, likely won’t stay there for long, and state residence law says they’re not residents there. When state officials then use that incorrect Census data in the legislative redistricting process, they inadvertently inflate the populations of those areas — in violation of constitutional principles of equal representation. This gives residents of state legislative districts that contain correctional facilities a particularly loud voice in government, allowing them to have an outsized influence on debates about childcare and school funding, food stamps, expanding medical release for incarcerated people, and more, at the expense of nearly every other person in the state.
To ensure equal representation, states across the country have taken steps to fix the prison gerrymandering problem that the Census Bureau created. But, Oregon is one of the remaining states still suffering from this “prison gerrymandering.” While the 2030 Census count is still years away, Oregon needs to act now to avoid prison gerrymandering the next time it redraws its districts.
Prison gerrymandering puts one Oregon district above all others
In Oregon, residents of House of Representatives District 60 are given a louder voice in government as a result of prison gerrymandering.
Although each district should have the same number of people living in it, the state counted people at the Snake River, Warner Creek, and Powder River Correctional Facilities as if they were residents of District 60. Those 3,672 people make up over 5% of the district’s population.1
When 2% is a big deal
Oregon tries to draw districts just 1% away from perfect equality — prison gerrymandering makes a mockery of that effort…
In addition to District 60, there are six other House of Representatives districts where correctional facilities alone account for over 2% of the population.
Just looking at a 2% distortion out of context, it would be easy to assume Oregon’s prison gerrymandering problem is minor. But Oregon is one of only 7 states that draw their districts so evenly that the population of the smallest and largest districts is less than 1% away from exact equality.
Coupling prison gerrymandering with the districts’ existing population variance, these seven districts fail to meet Oregon’s exacting standards for population equality.2 That failure stems from the state choosing to redistrict based on Census numbers that don’t accurately reflect where people live.
The seven most prison-gerrymandered House of Representatives districts in Oregon:
These seven districts are the most prison-gerrymandered in Oregon. For details on all districts, see the Appendix.
State House District
District Location
Notable facilities
Percent of the district that is incarcerated
District 60
Baker, Grant, Harney, Lake, Malheur and a portion of Deschutes Counties
Snake River Correctional Facility, Warner Creek Correctional Facility, Powder River Correctional Facility
5.4%
District 21
Portion of Marion County
Oregon State Penitentiary
2.8%
District 17
Portions of Linn and Marion Counties
Oregon State Correctional Institution, Santiam Correctional Institution
2.7%
District 58
Union, Wallowa and portion of Umatilla Counties
Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution, Umatilla County Jail
2.7%
District 57
Gilliam, Morrow, Sherman, Wheeler and portions of Clackamas, Jefferson, Marion, Umatilla, and Wasco Counties
Two Rivers Correctional Institute
2.7%
District 24
Portions of Polk and Yamhill Counties
FCI Sheridan and Camp
2.6%
District 26
Portions of Yamhill, Washington, and Clackamas Counties
Coffee Creek Correctional Facility
2.2%
That means that just 95 residents of District 60 have as much political clout as 100 residents in other districts. That imbalance in representation comes from the state choosing to redistrict based on Census numbers that don’t match the reality of where people live.
The Census counted people incarcerated in those facilities as if they were residents of the facility location, even though state correctional facilities regularly contain people who are incarcerated far from home, have no ties to the communities where the facilities are located, and are moved regularly between facilities for administrative convenience.3 Simply put, being incarcerated in a specific facility doesn’t make someone a resident of the surrounding district.
Prison gerrymandering disproportionately harms Oregon’s Black and Native residents
Prison gerrymandering reduces the political power of nearly all Oregon residents by allowing a handful of districts with large correctional facilities to claim residents from all over the state. It particularly harms Black and Native people and enshrines the racial inequities of mass incarceration into the state’s legislative districts.
In Oregon, like across the country, mass incarceration has a disproportionate impact along racial lines. In Oregon, Black and Native American residents are incarcerated at significantly higher rates and, therefore, are counted in the wrong place more often than Oregon’s white residents.
The racial impact of prison gerrymandering is so strong that, for example, 60% of Black people counted in State House District 60 were actually behind bars, rather than living in the community.
Native residents make up less than 1% of the State’s population, but 3% of people in prisons and jails. Black residents make up 2% of the state population, but a whopping 9% of people in prisons and 10% of people in jails.
Oregon’s disproportionate incarceration of Black and Native residents, combined with the Census Bureau counting incarcerated people as if they live at the facility location, means the state is effectively silencing the voices of a large portion of the state’s Black and Native residents.
Oregon law says a prison cell is not a residence. Census Bureau policy disagrees
Not only does the Census Bureau’s redistricting data cause prison gerrymandering, it also doesn’t comply with Oregon’s law. The state’s constitution explicitly states that being incarcerated doesn’t change a person’s residence:
For the purpose of voting, no person shall be deemed to have gained, or lost a residence … while confined in any public prison.
(Ore. Const. Art IV § 4.)
Instead of following state law, though, the Census Bureau follows its own “residence rule” to choose where to count incarcerated people — where they “live and sleep most of the time.” But it doesn’t even follow this rule properly when it comes to counting incarcerated people.
The Census Bureau counts incarcerated people at the location of the facility where they happen to be held on Census Day under the mistaken belief that that is where incarcerated people “live and sleep most of the time.” The facts, however, do not support its interpretation of its own definition of residence. It is well-established that in the modern era of mass incarceration, incarcerated people do not “live and sleep most of the time” at the facility where they are held on any given day (including Census Day). Nationally, 75% of people serve time in more than one prison facility, and 12% of people serve time in at least five facilities before returning home.
Representation in local government is also harmed by prison gerrymandering
The impact of prison gerrymandering is also clearly visible at the small scale: city governments.
For example, in the City of Pendleton, there is a City Council ward where incarcerated people account for 33% of the ward’s population. That’s Ward 2, which contains the Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution. The result is that 67 people in Ward 2 have the same power as 100 people in the other two wards.
Similarly, the City of Salem, which contains the Oregon State Penitentiary, Oregon State Correctional Institution, and Santiam Correctional Institution, also relied on Census data that counted people incarcerated there as if they were city residents. As a result, 13% of Ward 2 is made up of people incarcerated at the Oregon State Penitentiary. And in Ward 3, which contains the Oregon State and Santiam Correctional Institutions,4 incarcerated people account for nearly 5% of the population.
Facing these absurd distortions in representation, local governments across the country are taking matters into their own hands and rejecting the Bureau’s way of counting incarcerated people,5 even when their states fail to act.
Nationally, state and local governments are addressing the problem, but Oregon is lagging behind
Over the course of the last few decades, over 200 local governments and a growing number of states have taken action on their own to fix this problem. Nearly half of the US population now lives in a place that corrects redistricting data they receive from the Census to avoid prison gerrymandering.
States that have ended prison gerrymandering on their own include deep “blue” states like California, “purple” states like Maine and Pennsylvania, and deep “red” states like Montana — where prison gerrymandering-reform legislation received wide bipartisan support. But Oregon is falling behind and letting the state’s democracy be skewed by an outdated federal system.
2030 may seem far away, but other states have learned that the earlier that reforms are put in place, the less expensive, easier to produce, and more accurate the final redistricting data becomes. Every state has a different legislative approach to ending prison gerrymandering, and Oregon has already taken its first steps in drafting its own tailored version of legislation — most recently introduced as HB 2250 in the 2025 regular session.6
The Census Bureau is unlikely to change its policies about how to count incarcerated people in time for the 2030 Census, meaning that unless Oregon acts quickly, the state will once again be driven into prison-gerrymandering their legislative districts.
Oregon needs to end prison gerrymandering now.
About the Data
Correctional Facility Populations: To calculate the percentage of each district’s population that was in correctional facilities, we used the redistricting data (PL 94-171) from the 2020 Census. Table P1 provides the total population for each Census block and Table P5 provides the number of incarcerated people for each Census Block. Notably, this approach includes people in all kinds of correctional facilities, including state prisons, federal prisons, private prisons, local jails, halfway houses, etc.
Identifying specific facilities: Table P5 provides the population of correctional facilities without distinguishing between state, federal, or private facilities and it is published for each Census block. Census blocks do not necessarily translate directly to facilities, as some facilities are counted in multiple blocks and some blocks contain multiple facilities. To aid redistricting officials and advocates with using this data, the Prison Policy Initiative maintains a Facility Locator Tool that contains annotations of most of the Census blocks in the country that contain correctional facilities. These annotations rely on publicly-available data to identify facility names and types in each of these blocks.
Calculating how many Oregon residents are held by the Bureau of Prisons:
Our calculations on the number of people in federal prisons in each state are based on data provided by the Bureau of Prisons in response to our periodic Freedom of Information Act requests.
How this report quantifies prison gerrymandering compared to other analyses: There are a few ways to calculate the impact of prison gerrymandering, so other researchers may have used slightly different approaches that generate slightly different numbers for the same general problem. For example, some analyses only focus on prisons and exclude jail populations. That choice makes sense when looking at state-level policies and state districts because people in jails are very likely to also live in the legislative district where the jail is located. However, for this analysis, we included jails as well as state correctional facilities for two reasons: because State House districts often split county lines in Oregon, and about 5 % of the people held in Oregon jails are held for state and federal authorities. Still other approaches, such as that taken by the Redistricting Data Hub, are based on estimates of incarcerated people’s home addresses. That approach adds an additional level of precision for counting people held in state facilities because it seeks to not only address where these people were counted incorrectly — which accounts for the bulk of prison gerrymandering’s population distortion — but to also estimate where they should have been counted. Unfortunately, this approach isn’t able to reflect where people in federal facilities, most jails, and private facilities are from. And so, for simplicity, this report doesn’t use that approach.
Each of these approaches has its own merits, and none are universally better than others; they all highlight different aspects of how prison gerrymandering skews population numbers, and each has its own use. The complexities inherent in the current patchwork approach to identifying and solving prison gerrymandering point to the need for the Census Bureau to count incarcerated people at home in the first place in order to provide a comprehensive solution to prison gerrymandering.
Appendix: Correctional facility populations in Oregon House of Representatives Districts, 2020 Census
State House District
Total Population
Incarcerated Population
Percent of the District that is Incarcerated
1
71,157
62
0.1%
2
71,055
166
0.2%
3
70,671
234
0.3%
4
71,115
0
0.0%
5
71,219
51
0.1%
6
71,283
234
0.3%
7
71,134
20
0.0%
8
71,301
274
0.4%
9
70,203
280
0.4%
10
70,188
94
0.1%
11
70,054
0
0.0%
12
71,264
0
0.0%
13
70,346
0
0.0%
14
71,059
0
0.0%
15
71,187
196
0.3%
16
70,568
28
0.0%
17
70,807
1,931
2.7%
18
71,284
0
0.0%
19
71,087
15
0.0%
20
71,216
0
0.0%
21
71,267
2,009
2.8%
22
70,996
0
0.0%
23
71,205
35
0.0%
24
70,321
1,854
2.6%
25
71,233
0
0.0%
26
69,994
1,530
2.2%
27
70,303
0
0.0%
28
70,297
0
0.0%
29
70,080
321
0.5%
30
70,518
0
0.0%
31
71,273
136
0.2%
32
71,211
274
0.4%
33
69,930
357
0.5%
34
70,060
0
0.0%
35
70,155
0
0.0%
36
70,120
66
0.1%
37
69,990
0
0.0%
38
70,710
0
0.0%
39
70,690
0
0.0%
40
71,184
257
0.4%
41
70,626
0
0.0%
42
70,010
5
0.0%
43
70,754
0
0.0%
44
71,316
542
0.8%
45
69,962
453
0.6%
46
69,938
24
0.0%
47
69,944
67
0.1%
48
70,049
0
0.0%
49
70,439
0
0.0%
50
70,417
0
0.0%
51
71,223
0
0.0%
52
70,170
109
0.2%
53
70,378
164
0.2%
54
69,948
0
0.0%
55
70,036
0
0.0%
56
70,383
82
0.1%
57
70,221
1,861
2.7%
58
70,036
1,868
2.7%
59
70,462
1017
1.4%
60
71,209
3,818
5.4%
Table notes
Total Population
Total population reported for all blocks in the district (as redistricted in 2022). Block populations reported for the 2020 Census in the PL 94-171 redistricting summary files Table P1.
Incarcerated Population
Total incarcerated population reported in all blocks in the district (as redistricted in 2022), based on the incarcerated population in group quarters reported for the 2020 Census in the PL 94-171 redistricting summary files Table P5.
Percent of the District that is Incarcerated
This is the number of incarcerated people counted in the district divided by the total population of the district.
Of those 3,672 people counted at correctional facilities in District 60, 2,856 were counted at the Snake River Correctional Facility, 480 at Warner Creek Correctional Facility, and 336 at Powder River Correctional Facility. All three facilities were drawn into District 60, creating the highest correctional facility population of any Oregon House district. The prison gerrymandering impact for each of Oregon’s state House of Representatives is available in the Appendix. ↩
Even worse, some facilities don’t contain Oregon residents at all. District 24, for example, contains FCI Sheridan and Camp, which are used by the Federal Bureau of Prisons to hold people from all over the country. Only half of one percent of the Bureau of Prisons population comes from Oregon, which means out of the 1,790 people held by the Bureau of Prisons at the FCI Sheridan and Camp, only about 9 people are likely Oregon residents. And of those 9 Oregon residents, it’s unlikely that even one person would be an actual resident of District 24. ↩
There are also 271 people who were incarcerated at the Mill Creek Correctional Facility at the time of the 2020 Census and are still counted as if they were residents of Ward 3, despite the facility closing in 2021. ↩
Nationwide we identified over 200 local governments that avoided prison gerrymandering after the 2000 and 2010 Censuses (decades when zero and two, respectively, states adjusted their redistricting data to count people at home). This decade we limited the scope of our research but still found an additional 21 local governments scattered across 10 states that started doing so after the 2020 Census despite those states continuing to use unadjusted data for state-level districts. ↩
Though the text of that bill may look far from it now, it actually traces its legacy to this model bill, prepared by a coalition of civil rights, voting rights, and criminal justice organizations. ↩
Everyone in Alaska is supposed to have an equal voice in their government’s decisions, but an outdated and misguided Census Bureau policy that counts incarcerated people in the wrong place gives a few residents of the state a megaphone. It is a problem known as prison gerrymandering, and Alaska lawmakers can fix it.
Alaska blindly follows outdated bureaucratic federal policy
Every ten years, when the Census Bureau conducts its official tally of the nation’s population, it incorrectly counts incarcerated people as residents of prison cells rather than in their home communities. This is despite the fact that they usually are not from the prison town, have no family or social ties there, likely won’t stay there for long, and state residence law says they’re not residents there. When state officials then use that incorrect Census data in the legislative redistricting process, they inadvertently inflate the populations of those areas — in violation of constitutional principles of equal representation. This gives residents of state legislative districts that contain correctional facilities a particularly loud voice in government, allowing them to have an outsized influence on debates about child care access and education budgets, capping interest rates, wildfire planning, and more, at the expense of nearly every other person in the state.
To ensure equal representation, states across the country have taken steps to fix the prison gerrymandering problem that the Census Bureau created. But, Alaska is one of the remaining states still suffering from this “prison gerrymandering.” While the 2030 Census count is still years away, Alaska needs to act now to avoid prison gerrymandering the next time it redraws its districts.
Prison gerrymandering puts one Alaska district above all others
In Alaska, residents of House of Representatives District 30 are given a louder voice in government as a result of prison gerrymandering.
Although each district should have the same number of people living in it, the state counted people at the Goose Creek Correctional Center and Point Mackenzie Rehabilitation Farm as if they were residents of District 30. Those 1,471 people make up 8% of the district’s population.1
That means that just 92 residents of District 30 have as much political clout as 100 residents in other districts. That imbalance in representation comes from the state choosing to redistrict based on Census numbers that don’t match the reality of where people live.
The Census counts people incarcerated in those facilities as if they were residents of the facility location, even though they are incarcerated far from home, have no ties to the communities where the facilities are located, and are moved regularly between facilities for administrative convenience. Simply put, being incarcerated in a specific facility doesn’t make someone a resident of the surrounding district.
Prison gerrymandering disproportionately harms Alaska’s Native and Black residents
Prison gerrymandering reduces the political power of nearly all Alaska residents by allowing a few districts with large correctional facilities to claim residents from all over the state. And while it does that, it also enshrines the racial inequities of mass incarceration into the state’s legislative districts.
In Alaska, like across the country, mass incarceration has a disproportionate impact along racial lines. In Alaska, Native and Black residents are incarcerated at disproportionate rates and, therefore, are counted in the wrong place more often than Alaska’s white residents.
The racial impact of prison gerrymandering is so strong that, for example, nearly half of Native people, and over half of Black people counted in State House District 30 were actually behind bars, rather than living in the community.
Native residents make up 14% of the State’s population, but a whopping 40% of people in prisons. Black residents make up 3% of the state population, but 10% of people in prisons.
Alaska’s disproportionate incarceration of Native and Black residents, combined with the Census Bureau counting incarcerated people as if they live at the facility location, means the state is effectively silencing the voices of a large portion of the state’s Native and Black residents.
Alaska law says a prison cell is not a residence. Census Bureau policy disagrees
Not only does the Census Bureau’s redistricting data cause prison gerrymandering, it also doesn’t comply with Alaska’s law. The state’s statute on voting residence — determining where someone is represented — is clear that being incarcerated does not change your residence:
For the purpose of determining residence for voting, the place of residence is governed by the following rules:
(1) A person may not be considered to have gained a residence solely by reason of presence nor may a person lose it solely by reason of absence … while in an institution or asylum at public expense, while confined in public prison….
(Alaska Statutes § 15.05.020.)
In fact, just being present in any place doesn’t make you a resident there. The statute continues, explicitly requiring an intent to lose or gain residence:
(2) The residence of a person is that place in which the person’s habitation is fixed, and to which, whenever absent, the person has the intention to return….
(3) A change of residence is made only by the act of removal joined with the intent to remain in another place. There can only be one residence.
(4) A person does not lose residence if the person leaves home and goes to another country, state, or place in this state for temporary purposes only and with the intent of returning.
(5) A person does not gain residence in any place to which the person comes without the present intention to establish a permanent dwelling at that place….
(Alaska Statutes § 15.05.020.)
Being held in a correctional institution simply does not change your residence. And most incarcerated people intend to return home. Incarcerated people don’t generally stay in the area of the prison after their release and almost always go back to the communities they came from — if not the exact address they lived at before their arrest. So, under Alaska law, they aren’t residents of the facility location.
Instead of following state law, though, the Census Bureau follows its own “residence rule” to choose where to count incarcerated people — where they “live and sleep most of the time.” But it doesn’t even follow this rule properly when it comes to counting incarcerated people.
The Census Bureau counts incarcerated people at the location of the facility where they happen to be held on Census Day under the mistaken belief that that is where incarcerated people “live and sleep most of the time.” The facts, however, do not support its interpretation of its own definition of residence. It is well-established that in the modern era of mass incarceration, incarcerated people do not “live and sleep most of the time” at the facility where they are held on any given day (including Census Day). Nationally, 75% of people serve time in more than one prison facility, and 12% of people serve time in at least five facilities before returning home.
Representation in local governments is also harmed by prison gerrymandering
Even Alaska’s municipal governments aren’t spared from prison gerrymandering. There are two facilities that skew representation in Anchorage’s governing body, the Anchorage Assembly. When the city redrew its districts after the 2020 Census, it was likely unaware that the population data from the Census Bureau included residents from other parts of the city and the state.
District 1 contains the Anchorage Correctional Complex, where the Census Bureau counted 667 people, and District 2 contains the 299 people counted at the Hiland Mountain Correctional Center. Although the impact happens to be less dramatic than in the State House of Representatives, the result is that the city’s constitutionally-required efforts to equalize population across the districts were undermined because the city’s Reapportionment Committee put their trust in the Census data.
Facing such distortions in representation, local governments across the country are taking matters into their own hands and rejecting the Bureau’s way of counting incarcerated people,2 even when their states fail to act.
Nationally, state and local governments are addressing the problem, but Alaska is lagging behind
Over the course of the last few decades, over 200 local governments and a growing number of states have taken action on their own to fix this problem. Nearly half of the US population now lives in a place that corrects redistricting data they receive from the Census to avoid prison gerrymandering.
States that have ended prison gerrymandering on their own include deep “blue” states like California, “purple” states like Maine and Pennsylvania, and deep “red” states like Montana — where prison gerrymandering-reform legislation received wide bipartisan support. But Alaska is falling behind and letting the state’s democracy be skewed by an outdated federal system.
2030 may seem far away, but other states have learned that the earlier that reforms are put in place, the less expensive, easier to produce, and more accurate the final redistricting data becomes. Every state has a different legislative approach to ending prison gerrymandering, but as a practical matter, this model bill, prepared by a coalition of civil rights, voting rights, and criminal justice organizations, is a great place to start. It provides clear guidance on how this data should be collected, by whom, and how it will be used for the redistricting process.
The Census Bureau is unlikely to change its policies about how to count incarcerated people in time for the 2030 Census, meaning that unless Alaska acts quickly, the state will once again be driven into prison-gerrymandering their legislative districts.
Alaska needs to end prison gerrymandering now
About the Data
Correctional Facility Populations: To calculate the percentage of each district’s population that was in correctional facilities, we used the redistricting data (PL 94-171) from the 2020 Census. Table P1 provides the total population for each Census block and Table P5 provides the number of incarcerated people for each Census Block. Notably, this approach includes people in all kinds of correctional facilities, including state prisons, federal prisons, private prisons, local jails, halfway houses, etc.
Identifying specific facilities: Table P5 provides the population of correctional facilities without distinguishing between state, federal, or private facilities and it is published for each Census block. Census blocks do not necessarily translate directly to facilities, as some facilities are counted in multiple blocks and some blocks contain multiple facilities. To aid redistricting officials and advocates with using this data, the Prison Policy Initiative maintains a Facility Locator Tool that contains annotations of most of the Census blocks in the country that contain correctional facilities. These annotations rely on publicly-available data to identify facility names and types in each of these blocks.
How this report quantifies prison gerrymandering compared to other analyses: There are a few ways to calculate the impact of prison gerrymandering, so other researchers may have used slightly different approaches that generate slightly different numbers for the same general problem. For example, some analyses only focus on prisons and exclude jail populations. That choice makes sense when looking at state-level policies and state districts because people in jails are very likely to also live in the legislative district where the jail is located. However, for this analysis, we included jails as well as state correctional facilities because Alaska has a unified prison and jail system. Still other approaches, such as that taken by the Redistricting Data Hub, are based on estimates of incarcerated people’s home addresses. That approach adds an additional level of precision for counting people held in state facilities because it seeks to not only address where these people were counted incorrectly — which accounts for the bulk of prison gerrymandering’s population distortion — but to also estimate where they should have been counted. Unfortunately, this approach isn’t able to reflect where people in federal facilities, most jails, and private facilities are from. And so, for simplicity, this report doesn’t use that approach.
Each of these approaches has its own merits, and none are universally better than others; they all highlight different aspects of how prison gerrymandering skews population numbers, and each has its own use. The complexities inherent in the current patchwork approach to identifying and solving prison gerrymandering point to the need for the Census Bureau to count incarcerated people at home in the first place in order to provide a comprehensive solution to prison gerrymandering.
Appendix: Correctional facility populations in Alaska House of Representatives Districts, 2020 Census
State House District
Total Population
Incarcerated Population
Percent of the District that is Incarcerated
1
17,921
63
0.4%
2
18,048
12
0.1%
3
18,195
0
0.0%
4
18,122
255
1.4%
5
18,707
550
2.9%
6
18,434
6
0.0%
7
18,465
0
0.0%
8
18,471
433
2.3%
9
18,284
0
0.0%
10
18,523
0
0.0%
11
18,103
0
0.0%
12
18,217
0
0.0%
13
18,185
0
0.0%
14
18,213
29
0.2%
15
18,168
0
0.0%
16
18,182
0
0.0%
17
18,203
145
0.8%
18
18,023
780
4.3%
19
18,243
0
0.0%
20
18,239
0
0.0%
21
18,414
0
0.0%
22
18,285
0
0.0%
23
18,205
299
1.6%
24
18,032
0
0.0%
25
18,822
86
0.5%
26
18,807
0
0.0%
27
18,799
0
0.0%
28
18,793
0
0.0%
29
18,780
4
0.0%
30
18,736
1471
7.9%
31
18,294
203
1.1%
32
18,522
0
0.0%
33
18,500
0
0.0%
34
18,382
0
0.0%
35
18,367
129
0.7%
36
18,351
0
0.0%
37
18,226
16
0.1%
38
17,853
222
1.2%
39
17,453
132
0.8%
40
18,824
7
0.0%
Table notes
Total Population
Total population reported for all blocks in the district (as redistricted in 2022). Block populations reported for the 2020 Census in the PL 94-171 redistricting summary files Table P1.
Incarcerated Population
Total incarcerated population reported in all blocks in the district (as redistricted in 2022), based on the incarcerated population in group quarters reported for the 2020 Census in the PL 94-171 redistricting summary files Table P5.
Percent of the District that is Incarcerated
This is the number of incarcerated people counted in the district divided by the total population of the district.
Of the 1,471 people counted at correctional facilities in District 30, 1,360 were at Goose Creek Correctional Center, and 111 at Point Mackenzie Rehabilitation Farm. Both facilities were drawn into District 30, creating the highest correctional facility population of any Alaskan House district. The prison gerrymandering impact for each of Alaska’s state House of Representatives district is available in the Appendix. ↩
Nationwide we identified over 200 local governments that avoided prison gerrymandering after the 2000 and 2010 Censuses (decades when zero and two, respectively, states adjusted their redistricting data to count people at home). This decade we limited the scope of our research but still found an additional 21 local governments scattered across 10 states that started doing so after the 2020 Census despite those states continuing to use unadjusted data for state-level districts. ↩
Everyone in Wyoming is supposed to have an equal voice in their government’s decisions, but an outdated and misguided Census Bureau policy that counts incarcerated people in the wrong place gives a few residents of the state a megaphone. It is a problem known as prison gerrymandering, and Wyoming lawmakers can fix it.
Wyoming blindly follows outdated bureaucratic federal policy
Every ten years, when the Census Bureau conducts its official tally of the nation’s population, it incorrectly counts incarcerated people as residents of prison cells rather than in their home communities. This is despite the fact that they usually are not from the prison town, have no family or social ties there, likely won’t stay there for long, and state residence law says they’re not residents there. When state officials then use that incorrect Census data in the legislative redistricting process, they inadvertently inflate the populations of those areas — in violation of constitutional principles of equal representation. This gives residents of state legislative districts that contain correctional facilities a particularly loud voice in government, allowing them to have an outsized influence on debates about school vouchers, gun-free zones, taxation, and more, at the expense of nearly every other person in the state.
In order to ensure equal representation, states across the country have taken steps to fix the prison gerrymandering problem that the Census Bureau created. But, Wyoming is one of the remaining states still suffering from this “prison gerrymandering.” While the 2030 Census count is still years away, Wyoming needs to act now to avoid prison gerrymandering the next time it redraws its districts.
Prison gerrymandering significantly distorts Wyoming’s state legislative districts
Wyoming currently has one of the ten worst prison gerrymandered districts in the country. By relying on the Census Bureau’s data, Wyoming drew a district where more than 1 in 10 people are in a correctional facility rather than actual district residents. Surprisingly, this is actually an improvement over what the state did last decade, when it drew a blatantly prison-gerrymandered Senate district that snaked around an incumbent’s house and then followed the Nebraska border for 17 miles to snag a prison to pad out its population.
The good news is that, after the 2020 Census, the state didn’t embrace prison gerrymandering quite so explicitly. The bad news is that there are House of Representatives districts that still powerfully illustrate how the federal government steers states into prison gerrymandering, even if states don’t do it intentionally.
In these two House of Representatives districts — districts 2 and 15 — correctional facilities account for a significant portion of the population. In District 83, for example, correctional facilities make up about 14% of the population. That means that just 86 residents of that district have as much political clout as 100 residents in other districts. That imbalance in representation comes from the state choosing to redistrict based on Census numbers that don’t match the reality of where people live.
Two most prison-gerrymandered House of Representatives districts in Wyoming:
These two districts are the most prison-gerrymandered in Wyoming. For details on all districts, see the Appendix
District
District Location
Notable facilities
Percent of the district that is incarcerated
2
Parts of Goshen, Niobrara, and Weston Counties
Wyoming Honor Conservation Camp & Boot Camp, Wyoming Medium Correctional Institution, Wyoming Women’s Center
13.6%
15
Parts of Carbon and Sweetwater Counties
Wyoming State Penitentiary
5.9%
These two districts are the most prison-gerrymandered state legislative districts in Wyoming. Large chunks of their population are made up of prisons that contain people from other parts of the state, instead of local residents. State facilities regularly contain people who are incarcerated far from home, have no ties to the communities where the facilities are located, and are moved regularly between facilities for administrative convenience. Simply put, being incarcerated in a specific facility doesn’t make someone a resident of the surrounding district.
Prison gerrymandering disproportionately harms Wyoming’s Black and Native residents
Prison gerrymandering reduces the political power of nearly all Wyoming residents by allowing a few districts with large correctional facilities to claim residents from all over the state. It particularly harms Black and Native people and enshrines the racial inequities of mass incarceration into the state’s legislative districts.
In Wyoming, like across the country, mass incarceration has a disproportionate impact along racial lines. In Wyoming, Black and Native American residents are incarcerated at disproportionate rates and, therefore, are counted in the wrong place more often than Wyoming’s white residents.
The racial impact of prison gerrymandering is so strong that, for example, most Black people and a majority of Native people counted in State House District 2 were actually behind bars, rather than living in the community.
Black residents make up less than 1% of the state population, but 5% of people in prisons and jails. Native residents make up 2% of the State’s population, but a whopping 7% of people in prisons and 12% of people in jails.
Wyoming’s disproportionate incarceration of Black and Native residents, combined with the Census Bureau counting incarcerated people as if they live at the facility location, means the state is effectively silencing the voices of a large portion of the state’s Black and Native residents.
Wyoming law says a prison cell is not a residence. Census Bureau policy disagrees
Not only does the Census Bureau’s redistricting data cause prison gerrymandering, it also doesn’t comply with Wyoming’s law. The state’s residence statute explicitly states that being incarcerated doesn’t change a person’s residence:
“(A) Residence is the place where a person has a current habitation and to which, whenever he is absent, he has the intention of returning;
“(B) A person shall not gain or lose residence merely by reason of his presence or absence while… [k]ept at a hospital or other institution.”
Wyoming Annotated Statutes §22-1-102(a)(xxx)
Being held in a correctional institution simply does not change your residence. And most incarcerated people intend to return home. Incarcerated people don’t generally stay in the area of the prison after their release and almost always go back to the communities they came from — if not the exact address they lived at before their arrest. So, under Wyoming law, they aren’t residents of the facility location.
Instead of following state law, though, the Census Bureau follows its own “residence rule” to choose where to count incarcerated people — where they “live and sleep most of the time.” But it doesn’t even follow this rule properly when it comes to counting incarcerated people.
The Census Bureau counts incarcerated people at the location of the facility where they happen to be held on Census Day under the mistaken belief that that is where incarcerated people “live and sleep most of the time.” The facts, however, do not support its interpretation of its own definition of residence. It is well-established that in the modern era of mass incarceration, incarcerated people do not “live and sleep most of the time” at the facility where they are held on any given day (including Census Day). Nationally, 75% of people serve time in more than one prison facility, and 12% of people serve time in at least five facilities before returning home.
Representation in local government is also harmed by prison gerrymandering
The impact of prison gerrymandering is also clearly visible at the small scale: city and county governments.
For example, in the city of Rawlins, there is a City Council ward where incarcerated people account for 20% of the ward’s population. Ward 1 contains the Wyoming State Penitentiary. The result is that 80 people in Ward 1 have the same power as 100 people in the other two wards.
Facing these absurd distortions in representation, local governments across the country are taking matters into their own hands and rejecting the Bureau’s way of counting incarcerated people1, even when states fail to act.
Nationally, state and local governments are addressing the problem, but Wyoming is lagging behind
Over the course of the last few decades, over 200 local governments and a growing number of states have taken action on their own to fix this problem. Nearly half of the US population now lives in a place that corrects redistricting data they receive from the Census to avoid prison gerrymandering.
States that have ended prison gerrymandering on their own include deep “blue” states like California, “purple” states like Maine and Pennsylvania, and deep “red” states like Montana — where prison gerrymandering-reform legislation received wide bipartisan support. But Wyoming is falling behind and letting the state’s democracy be skewed by an outdated federal system.
2030 may seem far away, but other states have learned that the earlier that reforms are put in place, the less expensive, easier to produce, and more accurate the final redistricting data becomes. Every state has a different legislative approach to ending prison gerrymandering, but as a practical matter, this model bill, prepared by a coalition of civil rights, voting rights, and criminal justice organizations, is a great place to start. It provides clear guidance on how this data should be collected, by whom, and how it will be used for the redistricting process.
The Census Bureau is unlikely to change its policies about how to count incarcerated people in time for the 2030 Census, meaning that unless Wyoming acts quickly, the state will once again be driven into prison-gerrymandering their legislative districts.
Wyoming needs to end prison gerrymandering now.
About the Data
Correctional Facility Populations: To calculate the percentage of each district’s population that was in correctional facilities, we used the redistricting data (PL 94-171) from the 2020 Census. Table P1 provides the total population for each Census block and Table P5 provides the number of incarcerated people for each Census Block. Notably, this approach includes people in all kinds of correctional facilities, including state prisons, federal prisons, private prisons, local jails, halfway houses, etc.
Identifying specific facilities: Table P5 provides the population of correctional facilities without distinguishing between state, federal, or private facilities and it is published for each Census block. Census blocks do not necessarily translate directly to facilities, as some facilities are counted in multiple blocks and some blocks contain multiple facilities. To aid redistricting officials and advocates with using this data, the Prison Policy Initiative maintains a Facility Locator Tool that contains annotations of most of the Census blocks in the country that contain correctional facilities. These annotations rely on publicly-available data to identify facility names and types in each of these blocks.
Calculating how many Wyoming residents are held by the Bureau of Prisons:
Our calculations on the number of people in federal prisons in each state are based on data provided by the Bureau of Prisons in response to our periodic Freedom of Information Act requests.
How this report quantifies prison gerrymandering compared to other analyses: There are a few ways to calculate the impact of prison gerrymandering, so other researchers may have used slightly different approaches that generate slightly different numbers for the same general problem. For example, some analyses only focus on prisons and exclude jail populations. That choice makes sense when looking at state-level policies and state districts because people in jails are very likely to also live in the legislative district where the jail is located. However, for this analysis, we included jails as well as state correctional facilities because 12% of the people held in Wyoming jails are held for state and federal authorities. Still other approaches, such as that taken by the Redistricting Data Hub, are based on estimates of incarcerated people’s home addresses. That approach adds an additional level of precision for counting people held in state facilities because it seeks to not only address where these people were counted incorrectly — which accounts for the bulk of prison gerrymandering’s population distortion — but to also estimate where they should have been counted. Unfortunately, this approach isn’t able to reflect where people in federal facilities, most jails, and private facilities are from. And so, for simplicity, this report doesn’t use that approach.
Each of these approaches has its own merits, and none are universally better than others; they all highlight different aspects of how prison gerrymandering skews population numbers, and each has its own use. The complexities inherent in the current patchwork approach to identifying and solving prison gerrymandering point to the need for the Census Bureau to count incarcerated people at home in the first place in order to provide a comprehensive solution to prison gerrymandering.
Appendix: Correctional facility populations in Wyoming House of Representatives Districts, 2020 Census
State House District
Total Population
Incarcerated Population
Percent of the District that is Incarcerated
1
9,484
0
0.0%
2
9,741
1,320
13.6%
3
9,436
113
1.2%
4
8,879
44
0.5%
5
9,759
0
0.0%
6
9,732
32
0.3%
7
8,933
0
0.0%
8
8,923
0
0.0%
9
9,015
0
0.0%
10
8,978
0
0.0%
11
9,337
258
2.8%
12
9,336
0
0.0%
13
9,384
0
0.0%
14
9,278
0
0.0%
15
9,091
538
5.9%
16
9,623
0
0.0%
17
8,866
0
0.0%
18
8,886
47
0.5%
19
9,174
20
0.2%
20
9,303
0
0.0%
21
9,456
0
0.0%
22
9,522
0
0.0%
23
9,547
0
0.0%
24
9,031
0
0.0%
25
9,294
0
0.0%
26
8,999
0
0.0%
27
8,918
0
0.0%
28
8,875
111
1.3%
29
9,855
0
0.0%
30
9,808
0
0.0%
31
9,358
0
0.0%
32
9,668
110
1.1%
33
9,436
15
0.2%
34
9,647
0
0.0%
35
9,198
0
0.0%
36
9,174
0
0.0%
37
9,467
0
0.0%
38
9,641
0
0.0%
39
8,870
0
0.0%
40
9,886
19
0.2%
41
9,213
0
0.0%
42
8,999
0
0.0%
43
9,294
0
0.0%
44
9,231
0
0.0%
45
9,163
52
0.6%
46
9,241
0
0.0%
47
9,044
74
0.8%
48
8,871
0
0.0%
49
9,728
0
0.0%
50
9,019
0
0.0%
51
9,819
0
0.0%
52
9,172
0
0.0%
53
9,392
0
0.0%
54
9,731
13
0.1%
55
9,735
311
3.2%
56
9,277
0
0.0%
57
9,025
0
0.0%
58
9,594
275
2.9%
59
9,443
0
0.0%
60
8,918
0
0.0%
61
8,979
0
0.0%
62
9,155
0
0.0%
Table notes
Total Population
Total population reported for all blocks in the district (as redistricted in 2022). Block populations reported for the 2020 Census in the PL 94-171 redistricting summary files Table P1.
Incarcerated Population
Total incarcerated population reported in all blocks in the district (as redistricted in 2022), based on the incarcerated population in group quarters reported for the 2020 Census in the PL 94-171 redistricting summary files Table P5.
Percent of the District that is Incarcerated
This is the number of incarcerated people counted in the district divided by the total population of the district.
Nationwide we identified over 200 local governments that avoided prison gerrymandering after the 2000 and 2010 Censuses (decades when zero and two, respectively, states adjusted their redistricting data to count people at home). This decade we limited the scope of our research but still found an additional 21 local governments scattered across 10 states that started doing so after the 2020 Census despite those states continuing to use unadjusted data for state-level districts. ↩
