{"id":1681,"date":"2010-08-31T16:05:18","date_gmt":"2010-08-31T20:05:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/?p=1681"},"modified":"2010-09-02T14:20:17","modified_gmt":"2010-09-02T18:20:17","slug":"atmore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/2010\/08\/31\/atmore\/","title":{"rendered":"Escambia County, Alabama, avoids prison-based gerrymandering"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Lisa Tindell cites our <a href=\"\/50states\/AL.html#local\">research<\/a> in an article in Escambia County Alabama&#8217;s <i>Atmore Advance<\/i>: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.atmoreadvance.com\/2010\/08\/30\/county-omits-prison-count\/\">County omits prison count<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p class=\"quote\">The 2010 U.S. Census will determine more than just how many people live in a given regional area. Those numbers are also used when counties across the state of Alabama determine where district lines are drawn for government representation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"quote\">Escambia County makes determinations on those district lines based on actual residential population, unlike other counties that may use prison population as part of district residents.<\/p>\n<p class=\"quote\">Escambia County Administrator Tony Sanks said the population of prisons in the county is excluded when district lines are determined.<\/p>\n<p class=\"quote\">&#8220;The district lines in the county were redrawn in 2001 following the last Census,&#8221; Sanks said. &#8220;The prison count was not included when a determination was made on the number of residents living in a particular area were considered.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"quote\">Sanks said the reason for that is simple &#8212; prisons aren&#8217;t served by the county.<\/p>\n<p class=\"quote\">&#8220;<span class=\"pullquote\">We don&#8217;t serve the prison systems in any way so they simply are not included as constituents in a district<\/span>,&#8221; Sanks said. &#8220;They maintain their own roads and take care of their own services. Since we don&#8217;t serve them, we don&#8217;t count them as part of a district.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In my view, the ideal solution is for the Census Bureau to count incarcerated people at their home, not prison, addresses. But Escambia County&#8217;s solution is a good interim step that avoids giving some districts extra representation just because they happen to contain a large prison.<\/p>\n<p>Read the rest of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.atmoreadvance.com\/2010\/08\/30\/county-omits-prison-count\/\">article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lisa Tindell cites our research in an article in Escambia County Alabama&#8217;s Atmore Advance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-1681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-shorts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1681","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=1681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1681\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1681"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}