Prison gerrymandering skews representation, not funding formulas
A new report about Census-guided funding could raise a common misconception about prison gerrymandering and money. We explain how ending prison gerrymandering will have a big impact on political representation, but not funding.
by Aleks Kajstura, December 9, 2025
Recently, the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) published an updated report, Census Matters: Why an Accurate Count is Essential to Funding Our Communities, examining how much federal funding is distributed based on Census data.
If you’re familiar with how the Census counts incarcerated people — where they are held on Census day rather than at home — you might assume that will impact where the funding goes. This is a common assumption — one that we’ve debunked several times before — but it doesn’t reflect the truth. With this report’s release, we thought it was worth reviewing the facts that show ending prison gerrymandering has little to no impact on the amount of federal dollars a community receives, but it can have a big impact on a community’s voice in government.
At the center of the misconception is that there is a set amount of dollars that a community receives for every person counted in the Census. It’s true that a lot of funding depends in some way on Census data; The POGO report concludes that “census results inform the allocation of trillions of dollars in assistance funding from the federal government to states, districts, cities, and other localities.” However, this funding isn’t a lump sum that can be converted to a dollar amount per head.
The new POGO report itself warns against using their findings to calculate per-person funding allocation, and it’s worth highlighting here:
While a “per capita” loss for each person miscounted would be a persuasive data point, the complex nature of federal funding programs and the ways they use census data make that figure impossible to calculate.
The truth is that money is generally distributed based on complex formulas that strive to match funds to the needs. To the extent that these rely on population totals, it is just one of many components taken into consideration. For example, as you might expect, poverty measures play an important role in funding allocations targeted to fill the needs of impoverished communities. But the federal poverty data used in those formulas does not include incarcerated people.
The myth that funding is distributed as a set amount of money per person is mostly the result of well-intentioned over-generalizations and simplification in an effort to have everyone counted. Desperate not to lose any population in the decennial count, governments often resort to putting a price tag on each person’s failure to respond. For example, as officials in one Georgia community tried to ensure their residents were counted, the local paper made claims such as: “If only one person is counted in a house with four people, it will mean $69,000 less in local coffers over a decade.” It’s a statement that may motivate action, but comes at the expense of the truth.
Certainly, it is important that the Census counts everyone. Census populations determine how legislative districts are drawn and in general terms, play a major role in how federal funds are distributed. But where incarcerated people are counted has less impact on funding flows than people assume.
Ending prison gerrymandering will ensure fair representation that will align legislative priorities with the needs of actual constituents. This will have a direct impact on policy, but will not shift a set amount of money from a prison town to the communities hit hardest by mass incarceration.
Want to help spread the word, or just want a change of formatting?
Here is our fact sheet (including all the sources and explanation of the different Census “censuses” that are used in funding allocations.)
