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.

Can you help us continue the fight? Thank you.

—Peter Wagner, Executive Director
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Shorts archives

On Monday Cranston voters and the ACLU of Rhode Island asked the court to let the case continue against the City's prison gerrymandering scheme.

by Aleks Kajstura, April 3, 2014

On Monday Cranston voters and the ACLU of Rhode Island asked the court to let the case continue against the City’s prison gerrymandering scheme, filing a response to the City’s motion to dismiss.

Our Davidson case page has more info on the case, including the response above and other legal documents.


Rhode Island's new House speaker's district is based on prison gerrymandering, flaunts "one person, one vote"

by Aleks Kajstura, April 1, 2014

Today, Ed Fitzpatrick, political columnist for the Providence journal, tackled prison gerrymandering in Rhode Island:

[T]here’s nothing unusual about the fact that new Democratic House Speaker Nicholas A. Mattiello now wields more power than if he were simply representing part of Cranston.

But there is one unusual thing about Mattiello’s House district: 8.6 percent of the people in his district are inmates at the Adult Correctional Institutions, and the vast majority of those inmates can’t vote for or against him, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, based in Easthampton, Mass.

“It’s representation without population,” said the group’s legal director, Aleks Kajstura. “Counting incarcerated people as if they were residents of the ACI undermines the principle of one person, one vote.”

According to 2010 Census data, the ACI in Cranston houses 3,433 inmates, and many of them are ineligible to vote because they’re behind bars for a felony conviction. About 1,000 of the inmates face misdemeanors or are awaiting trial and can still vote. But they must vote by absentee ballot using the address they had before they checked into A.T. Wall’s graybar hotel (as I like to call it)….

“[Mattiello] has a responsibility to fix this problem, especially now that he is speaker,” Prison Policy Initiative executive director Peter J. Wagner said Monday. “This is about fairness and what’s right for the state. It’s not one corner of Cranston. He has a responsibility to ensure all state residents equal representation in government.”


Boston Globe covers prison gerrymandering in Mass. towns, highlights pending resolution urging Census Bureau to act.

by Aleks Kajstura, March 20, 2014

The Boston Globe published an article by Johanna Seltz today taking a thorough look at how prison gerrymandering undermines democracy in Massachusetts:

It’s been called the purest form of democracy — the annual Massachusetts ritual of town meeting dating back to the 1630s — when neighbors get together to spend their community’s money and set its rules, arguing everything from whether to build a new school to how much to charge for trash disposal.

But as this spring’s town meeting season rolls in, a research group is questioning whether the institution is working as it should in communities that host prisons, including Billerica, Dedham, Framingham, Plymouth, and Walpole.

The Prison Policy Initiative in Easthampton says that voters in some precincts in those towns wield unfair power — with more town meeting members than they should have.

That’s because the US Census Bureau counts incarcerated people as residents of their prison locations, rather than their home addresses, according to report author Aleks Kajstura. The method is used, she said, even though prisoners can’t vote in local elections.

…Walpole Town Clerk Ron Fucile said he’s been concerned for a while about the fairness of including the prisoners at the state MCI-Cedar Junction as part of the town’s precinct five. Earlier this month he successfully asked selectmen to reduce the number of Town Meeting seats in that precinct by one — adding it to another precinct.

“It’s more the way it ought to be,” Fucile said. He said he’d ultimately like the town charter changed to scrub the prison population altogether from the formula used to determine precinct seats. The number of prisoners fluctuates, but is usually about 700, he said.

“I also told the board it is time the Census Bureau and our Legislature come up with a law which addresses the prison being there,” he added.

In fact, pending legislation on Beacon Hill would “urge” the Census Bureau to use prisoners’ home addresses for redistricting purposes.

The bill, sponsored by Senators Sonia Chang-Diaz and Linda Dorcena Forry of Boston and Representative Thomas Stanley of Waltham, says that the current method “results in distortions of the one-person, one-vote principle in drawing electoral districts in Massachusetts, diluting the representation of the majority of districts that do not contain prisons.”

Study says prison population pads voter tally in some districts, by Johanna Seltz, Boston Globe

For more info, check out our Massachusetts page on ending prison gerrymandering in Massachusetts.


Virginia League of Women Voters calls on the Census Bureau to count incarcerated people at home, end prison gerrymandering.

by Aleks Kajstura, March 4, 2014

The League of Women Voters of Virginia recently sent a letter to the Census Bureau, calling on the Bureau to end prison gerrymandering by counting incarcerated people as residents of their home addresses by the next Census.

For more info check out the League’s newsletter article onVirginia’s continuing struggles with prison gerrymandering, and our page tracking the Virginia campaign to end prison gerrymandering.


Bills to end prison gerrymandering get committee hearings in Rhode Island and New Jersey. NJ bill passed out of committee, RI voting soon.

by Aleks Kajstura, February 14, 2014

This week the New Jersey and Rhode Island state legislatures held hearings on their respective bills to end prison gerrymandering.

On Monday, the New Jersey Assembly Judiciary Committee held a hearing on Assembly Bill 659. After receiving testimony from the ACLU and PPI, the bill was successfully reported favorably out of committee.

The next day, Rhode Island’s Senate Bill 0147 was up for discussion before the Rhode Island Senate Committee on Judiciary. We submitted testimony in support of the bill and expect the committee to vote on the bill soon.


Grits for Breakfast argues that Texas should follow its local governments' pragmatic approach to redistricting and avoid prison gerrymandering.

by Aleks Kajstura, December 10, 2013

One thing I didn’t mention in yesterday’s post about Jonathan Tilove’s article is the coverage it received at the Texas criminal justice blog, Grits for Breakfast: Rural counties treat prisoners as political footballs when drawing electoral districts.

The whole post is worth a read for its frank analysis of Texas’ state and county politics surrounding prison gerrymandering, but its conclusion summarized the state’s failure to end prison gerrymandering best:

…as long as the topic is considered through the lens of state-level partisanship instead of county-level pragmatism, changing it in the near future would be an uphill climb.


Civil rights and good government groups are showing a lot of enthusiasm for ending prison gerrymandering in Ohio. In November, I presented our research to stakeholders and....

by Peter Wagner, December 5, 2013

Civil rights, civic engagement, and good government groups are showing a lot of enthusiasm for ending prison gerrymandering in Ohio. On Friday Nov 22, I flew out to Columbus Ohio to present our research on how the Census Bureau’s decision to count incarcerated people as residents of the correctional facilities and not of their homes distorts democracy in Ohio. During the presentation, I told the stories of how Maryland and New York built a movement to pass their first-in-the-nation laws ending prison gerrymandering.

Greg Moore of the NAACP National Voter Fund and Deidra Reese of Ohio Voice then led a discussion about next steps. There was a lot of enthusiasm in the room, and I’m looking forward to working with the groups in the near future on a successful campaign in Ohio. Stay tuned to this blog, and to our new Ohio campaign page for more information as it develops.

Greg Moore and Deidre Reese leading a discussion about ending prison gerrymandering in Ohio on November 22, 2013.

Greg Moore and Deidra Reese (center) leading a discussion about ending prison gerrymandering in Ohio on November 22, 2013.(Photo: Petee Talley)


Massachusetts Resolution S 309/H 3185 passed joint House and Senate Election Laws committee, moves on to the committee on Rules.

by Aleks Kajstura, October 22, 2013

A Massachusetts resolution (S309/H3185) urging the Census Bureau to end prison gerrymandering by counting incarcerated people at their home addresses just passed out of the Joint Committee on Election Laws. In March, the Prison Policy Initiative joined other supporters to testify before the committee in support of the resolution.

The resolution now heads to the Joint Committee on Rules.


The federal government, in the form of the Census Bureau, is permitting states and counties all over the country to undermine the "one person, one vote" concept.

by Peter Wagner, October 8, 2013

A new blog post by Andrew Cohen at the Brennan Center for Justice reviews the struggle to end prison gerrymandering, adding some great historical context:

Fifty years ago, in two vital cases you don’t hear much about anymore, the United States Supreme Court set forth a “one person, one vote” standard for legislative redistricting that we all think we live under today….

Now let’s jump ahead half a century for a lesson in how even the Court’s noblest endeavors can be undermined by practical realities. The federal government, in the form of the Census Bureau, is permitting states and counties all over the country to undermine the “one person, one vote” concept.

His piece then goes on to discuss some of the new developments in the movement to ensure that the Census Bureau listens to the state and local governments that are calling for a national end to prison gerrymandering, and agrees to tabulate incarcerated people as reidents of their home communities in the next census.

Thanks, Andrew!

(For more of Andrew’s great updates and reporting on criminal justice issues, follow him on Twitter, and check out the other pieces he’s written for the Brennan Center for Justice and for The Atlantic.)


"[Prison gerrymandering] distorts the political process and raises concerns about the fairness of the census process itself."

by Leah Sakala, September 27, 2013

Thumbnail of New York Times editorial

The New York Times published a strong editorial today calling on the Census Bureau to end prison gerrymandering by tabulating incarcerated people at their home addresses in 2020:

[Prison gerrymandering] distorts the political process and raises concerns about the fairness of the census process itself. That’s reason enough for the bureau to solve this problem now.




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