Federal Census policy breaks Kansas’ democracy — state lawmakers can fix it

Kansas’ redistricting data was once again skewed after the 2020 Census; the state needs to take action to fix the issue for 2030

by Aleks Kajstura, June 25, 2025

Everyone in Kansas is supposed to have an equal voice in their government’s decisions, but an outdated and misguided Census Bureau policy that counts incarcerated people in the wrong place gives a few residents of the state a megaphone.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 Kansas lawmakers can fix it.

Kansas blindly follows outdated bureaucratic federal policy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 mail-in ballots, abortion, beer sales, defining new crimes, college admission standards, and more, at the expense of nearly every other person in the state.

Counting incarcerated people correctly matters; so states across the country have taken steps to fix the problem that the Census Bureau created. But, Kansas is one of the remaining states still suffering from this “prison gerrymandering.” While the 2030 Census count is still years away, Kansas needs to act now to avoid prison gerrymandering the next time it redraws its districts.

Prison gerrymandering significantly distorts Kansas’ state legislative districts

In Kansas, 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 state House districts — districts 40, 41, 102, and 75 — correctional facilities account for as much as 11% of the population. In District 40, for example, correctional facilities make up roughly 11% of the population. That means that just 89 residents of that district have as much political clout as 100 residents in any other 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.

These four districts are the most prison-gerrymandered state legislative districts in Kansas. Large chunks of their population are made up of prisons that contain people from other parts of the state (or other states), 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 facilities in District 41 don’t contain Kansas residents. The FCI and FPC Leavenworth facilities are used by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and the United States Disciplinary Barracks (USDB), and Midwest Joint Regional Correctional Facility are used by U.S. Army and hold people from all over the country. e don’t know precisely where the people held at the Army’s correctional facilities live, however, we do have data from the Bureau of Prisons that provides some insights. Less than 1% of the Bureau of Prisons population comes from Kansas, which means out of the 1,724 people held by the Bureau of Prisons at the FCI and FPC Leavenworth facilities, only about 12 people are likely Kansas residents. And of those 12 Kansas residents, it’s unlikely that even one person would be an actual resident of District 41.

Prison gerrymandering disproportionately harms Kansas’ Black and Native American residents

Prison gerrymandering reduces the political power of nearly all Kansas 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.

The racial impact of prison gerrymandering is so strong in Kansas that 60% of the Black people counted in District 75 were actually behind bars, rather than living in the community.

The district’s population is so distorted because, in Kansas, like across the country, mass incarceration has a disproportionate impact along racial lines. In Kansas, Black residents are incarcerated at disproportionate rates and, therefore counted in the wrong place more often than Kansas’ white residents.

Black residents make up 5% of the state population, but a whopping 27% of people in prisons and 25% of people in jails. That means they are incarcerated at roughly five times the rate you would expect based on their population.

Native American residents are also disproportionately impacted, making up just half of one percent of the state population but 2% of people in prisons and 1% of people in jails. That means they are incarcerated at roughly four times the rate you would expect based on their population.

Counting incarcerated people in the wrong place adds up. Just in the four districts highlighted above, nearly 2,800 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.

Kansas 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 Kansas’ law. The state’s statute on voting residence — determining where someone is represented — is clear that just being present in a place doesn’t make you a resident there. It explicitly requires a person to have “adopted” it as their home and intend to return there when absent:

“Residence” means the place adopted by a person as such person’s place of habitation, and to which, whenever such person is absent, such person has the intention of returning.

Kansas Statutes § 25-407

Most incarcerated people don’t “adopt” their cell — or the surrounding community — as their 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 Kansas 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.

Kansas is long overdue to correct its redistricting data to match its residence law and the realities of where incarcerated people actually reside.

Kansas recently modernized its approach to counting college students and military members — now it needs to do so for incarcerated people

Adjusting redistricting data to count people at home may already sound familiar, because until 2019, Kansas surveyed college students and members of the military to pick a “permanent” residence for redistricting purposes. The state would use those answers to adjust the population numbers from the Census Bureau — a holdover from when the state conducted its own census entirely. But by the end of the last decade, it became clear that approach no longer made sense — it was a costly solution to a problem that no longer existed.

For one, the Census itself changed its own approach to counting deployed military — they are now counted at their “usual residence” — where they eat and sleep most of the time — which also happens to be the where they intend to return to after deployment, and so matches their residence under Kansas law. That change also makes sense because military personnel and their families are integral members of their home communities and should be counted as part of that community, even when deployed for extended periods.

Secondly, Kansas updated its understanding of where college students actually live, now matching its own residence law with the Census Bureau’s residence criteria. Kansas’ approach to counting students used to result in students being counted at their parents’ address for the duration of the time they lived at college. That approach may have made sense historically, but the majority of students today remain near the college after graduation. In fact, the Census Bureau followed those trends and changed where it counts students — from their parents’ house to their school address — in 1950. So now Kansas uses Census Data to count students where they live — at the college.

So while the Census Bureau’s count of college students and military now aligns with Kansas’ residence law and general concept of what counts as home, the same is not true for incarcerated people.

Of course, cost concerns were one of the reasons why Kansas finally stopped adjusting student and military populations. But those high costs were a result of the state’s process of individually surveying every college student and military member in the state; and that process is not applicable to fixing how incarcerated people are counted. States that count incarcerated people at home¹ do so relatively inexpensively, using existing administrative records, and often within existing staff capacities.

In fact, some local governments in Kansas have already started adjusting their redistricting populations to avoid prison gerrymandering their own city council and county commissioner districts.

Some local governments are already tackling prison gerrymandering on their own

The impact of prison gerrymandering is clearly visible at the small scale: city and county governments.

For example, in Reno County, there is a County Commissioner district where incarcerated people account for 13% of the district’s population. The district contains the Hutchinson Correctional Facility. The result is that 87 people in that district have the same power as 100 people in the other four commissioner districts.

Facing these absurd distortions in representation, some of Kansas’ local governments have already started taking matters into their own hands and rejecting the Bureau’s way of counting incarcerated people. In the two latest redistricting cycles, at least two local governments in Kansas have avoided prison gerrymandering to ensure their residents have equal representation in local government: Lansing City and Leavenworth County².

In most cases, adjusting redistricting data to avoid prison gerrymandering is quite easy for local governments. However, the state can 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 city and county.

Nationally, state and local governments are addressing the problem, but Kansas 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 Kansans are falling behind, letting the state’s democracy continue to be skewed by an outdated federal system.

Kansas needs to take action now

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.” Kansas can now confidently pass legislation to count incarcerated people at home for redistricting purposes. Other states have already been successful in these efforts, paving the way for Kansas. The state would also have the benefit of refining its approach based on lessons learned by states that have gone through the process before. And it is easier than ever for states to act; even the Census Bureau is starting to acknowledge the problem and help.

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.

In the 2020 redistricting cycle, Kansas was finally able to rely on the Census Bureau to count college students and military members at home. However, to count incarcerated people at home, Kansas still needs to start doing so itself. The Census Bureau is unlikely to change its policies about how to count incarcerated people in time for the 2030 Census, meaning that unless Kansas acts quickly, the state will once again be driven into prison-gerrymandering their legislative districts.

Kansas 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 Kansas 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 18% of the people in Kansas’ 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 Kansas State House Districts, 2020 Census