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

Georgia’s 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, October 29, 2025

Everyone in Georgia is supposed to have an equal voice in their government’s decisions, but an outdated and misguided Census Bureau policy that counts incarcerated people in the wrong place gives a few residents of the state a megaphone.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Georgia blindly follows outdated bureaucratic federal policy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 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.

Georgia 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.” Georgia 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 Georgia. And the state would 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.

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

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 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.