{"id":1357,"date":"2010-06-06T18:51:05","date_gmt":"2010-06-06T22:51:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/?p=1357"},"modified":"2010-06-09T15:00:21","modified_gmt":"2010-06-09T19:00:21","slug":"hypocrisy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/2010\/06\/06\/hypocrisy\/","title":{"rendered":"Hypocrisy on prison-based gerrymandering in Illinois"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Angela Caputo of <i>ChicagoNow<\/i> <\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"padding: 0;\">\n<p>analyzed the voting records of lawmakers representing Illinois&#8217; 21 most inmate-heavy House districts. Of the two-dozen bills analyzed, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chicagonow.com\/blogs\/chicago-muckrakers\/2010\/06\/are-ex-offenders-interests-a-priority-for-legislators.html\">the Reporter found<\/a>: <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Six House members representing the state&#8217;s 21 most inmate-heavy districts voted at least two-thirds of the time against legislation around ex-offender jobs and education;<\/li>\n<li>Eight voted against those same measures at least half of the time; <\/li>\n<li>And, only one House member signed on as a co-sponsor to a piece of ex-offender legislation.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>That&#8217;s great research about one part of the hypocrisy of defending prison-based gerrymandering in Illinois. <!--more-->Caputo identifies the leading opponent of reform:<\/p>\n<p class=\"quote\">Among the chief opponents is Republican state Rep. Ron Stephens from Highland whose district includes Fayette County&#8217;s Vandalia Correctional Center.<\/p>\n<p>I wrote in a comment on the article about another kind of hypocrisy:<\/p>\n<p class=\"quote\">Rep. Ford&#8217;s bill is not about funding. The bill is about creating one consistent policy state-wide for how legislative districts should be drawn. Should legislators draw districts around prisons and grant enhanced representation to the people who live next to prisons? <\/p>\n<p class=\"quote\"><span class=\"pullquote\" title=\"Rep. Stephens says prison-based gerrymandering is fair. His own constituents disagree.\" ><\/span>For state legislative purposes, Rep. Ron Stephens says yes. But his own constituents in Vandalia City, Fayette County, and 9 other rural counties with prisons and 4 other rural Illinois cities all disagree. <\/p>\n<p class=\"quote\">When those <a href=\"\/factsheets\/il\/10_IL_counties.pdf\">15 rural places<\/a> last drew their county and city legislative districts they choose reject the Census Bureau&#8217;s prison count and draw fair districts on the basis of actual population. In some of these places, doing things Rep. Stephens&#8217; way would have meant giving some residents twice the influence over the future of their counties as other residents. If these counties can reject the Census Bureau&#8217;s prison count, so to should the state. <\/p>\n<p>Writing that comment I couldn&#8217;t help but think of Elena Lavarreda&#8217;s recent <a href=\"\/news\/2010\/06\/02\/notbigger\/\">post<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p class=\"quote\">Often, the biggest proponents of maintaining prison-based gerrymandering are state legislative officials with prisons in their districts.  The extra population, which can&#8217;t vote, leaves fewer real constituents to be responsible to. Many times, the advantage brought by prison-based gerrymandering at the state legislative level is large enough to fight for, but not so big that one looks unreasonable to fight for it. These <span class=\"pullquote\" title=\"State officials have the luxury of crafting specious arguments in defense of prison-based gerrymandering\">officials have the luxury of crafting specious arguments in defense of prison-based gerrymandering because the impact is comparatively small.<\/span> <\/p>\n<p class=\"quote\"><span class=\"pullquote\">County officials, however, do not have the same luxury.<\/span> Their county board districts tend to be smaller, so a single large prison could be the majority of the district.  Granting some people who live near a prison more than twice the influence than others over their government simply doesn&#8217;t make sense. That&#8217;s why every county but one which has had to grapple with prison-based gerrymandering has rejected the practice, and excluded the prisoners when drawing their districts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ChicagoNow calls out downstate politicians for hypocrisy, comparing their voting records to claims that they actually represent incarcerated people&#8217;s interests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-1357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1357\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1357"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}