{"id":1860,"date":"2010-11-12T08:44:21","date_gmt":"2010-11-12T13:44:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/?p=1860"},"modified":"2019-08-28T14:12:12","modified_gmt":"2019-08-28T18:12:12","slug":"adams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/2010\/11\/12\/adams\/","title":{"rendered":"Are legislative maps hurting prison reforms?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Pam Adams has an excellent column in the <i>Journal Star<\/i> in Peoria Illinois: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pjstar.com\/article\/20101111\/News\/311119892\">Are legislative maps hurting prison reforms?<\/a> <\/p>\n<p>She explains that gerrymandering districts around prisons helps makes reforming the budget-busting prison system more difficult. But unlike New York, Illinois&#8217; districts with large prisons are evenly distributed between Republicans and Democrats.   The bi-partisan support for retaining prison-based gerrymandering doesn&#8217;t make ending the practice any easier, but if Illinois wants to  fair districts to guide the state for the next decade, reform is needed:<\/p>\n<p class=\"quote\">&#8220;The state has about 50,000 men and women in prison. Though most of the state&#8217;s prisons are downstate, most of the state&#8217;s prison inmates are from the Chicago area. Most of them will return to the Chicago area in less than two years. Counting prison inmates where they&#8217;re confined rather than where they live means Chicago basically exports political power to prison-padded districts downstate.<\/p>\n<p class=\"quote\">&#8220;We ought to be a bit more grateful to Chicago down here. Especially with a round of legislative redistricting on the horizon and downstate potentially in line to lose yet another Illinois House seat because population hasn&#8217;t kept up with the competition.<\/p>\n<p class=\"quote\">&#8220;Except it&#8217;s not fair. Not to the prison inmates who can&#8217;t vote. Not to voters in districts that don&#8217;t have prisons. Not to basic democratic principles.<\/p>\n<p class=\"quote\">&#8220;And it definitely doesn&#8217;t provide much political incentive to pass reforms that would reduce the more than $1 billion annually the state spends on prisons.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire column: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pjstar.com\/article\/20101111\/News\/311119892\">Are legislative maps hurting prison reforms?<\/a> <\/p>\n<p class=\"source\">See also our <a href=\"\/illinois.html\">Organizing Against Prison-Based Gerrymandering in Illinois page<\/a> for more research, fact sheets and news coverage. Or see Pam Adams earlier column about prison-based gerrymandering: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pjstar.com\/article\/20100502\/NEWS\/305029935\">Where should prisoners be counted?<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pam Adams has an excellent column in the Journal Star in Peoria Illinois: Are legislative maps hurting prison reforms? She explains that gerrymandering districts around prisons helps makes reforming the budget-busting prison system more difficult. But unlike New York, Illinois&#8217; districts with large prisons are evenly distributed between Republicans and Democrats. The bi-partisan support for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,9,1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[29],"class_list":["post-1860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-of","category-shorts","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1860","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=1860"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1860\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9321,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1860\/revisions\/9321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1860"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}