FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Peter Wagner, (413) 527-0845,
Anna Pycior, apycior@demos.org, (212) 389-1408<\/p>\n
Demos<\/a> and the Prison Policy Initiative<\/a>, two national public policy organizations, applaud the California<\/a> Senate for passage yesterday of AB 420<\/a>, a bill to end prison-based gerrymandering. Introduced by Assemblymember Mike Davis, the legislation would end the practice of treating incarcerated individuals as residents of the districts where they are temporarily confined, for redistricting purposes. <\/p>\n This legislation directs the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to report the last known addresses of incarcerated persons to the Secretary of State and the Citizens Redistricting Commission. The data will then be used to count incarcerated individuals as members of their home communities. If passed again by the California Assembly, the new rule would go into effect in the 2020 redistricting cycle.<\/p>\n \u201cWe applaud the California Senate for recognizing that it is a violation of California state law to continue the state\u2019s practice of counting incarcerated individuals as residents of their prison localities for redistricting purposes<\/span>,\u201d said Brenda Wright, Democracy Program Director at Demos. \u201cAccording to the California Election Code, \u2018A person does not gain or lose a domicile solely by reason of his or her presence or absence from a place while\u2026 kept in an almshouse, asylum or prison,\u2019\u201d Wright added. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cAdding insult to injury, the miscount of incarcerated individuals also violates the fundamental \u2018one-person, one-vote\u2019 principle of our democracy. Counting them as residents in prison localities artificially inflates the local population count, allowing districts to be drawn with fewer actual constituents than required. This then impairs the representation of individuals in districts that are not padded by inclusion of a prison population,\u201d said Wright.<\/p>\n The state law called for in AB 420 echoes local practices; most California counties with state prisons<\/a> omit the prison population from their calculations when drawing county supervisorial districts.<\/p>\n \u201cMost California counties with prisons recognize that incarcerated individuals remain constituents in their home communities,\u201d said Peter Wagner, Executive Director of the Prison Policy Initiative. \u201cYesterday the Senate decided that the state\u2019s allocation of incarcerated persons for redistricting purposes should be guided by counties\u2019 sensible approach to the issue,\u201d Wagner added.<\/p>\n According to Wagner, \u201cThe California Senate\u2019s action reflects a national trend towards correcting the miscount of incarcerated persons in redistricting. New York<\/a>, Maryland<\/a> and Delaware<\/a> all passed legislation to end prison-based gerrymandering last year.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cWe expect that the U.S. Census Bureau will take note of the growing state trend to end prison-based gerrymandering, and begin counting incarcerated persons as residents of their home communities in the 2020 decennial census,\u201d added Brenda Wright.<\/p>\n