{"id":6941,"date":"2013-04-10T16:18:52","date_gmt":"2013-04-10T20:18:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/?p=6941"},"modified":"2013-04-11T10:56:24","modified_gmt":"2013-04-11T14:56:24","slug":"vigo-indiana-excludes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/2013\/04\/10\/vigo-indiana-excludes\/","title":{"rendered":"Vigo County settles lawsuit, avoids prison gerrymandering"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vigo County Indiana is following the lead of its county seat<\/a> by ending prison gerrymandering. The Tribune Star reports<\/a> that the Commissioners of Vigo County will approve a redistricting plan that excludes the incarcerated population at the Terre Haute Federal Correctional Complex.\n<\/p>\n

\nRedistricting is generally required every decade to ensure that the residents are equally divided among the County Council districts, but Vigo County failed to redistrict for two decades. By the 2010 Census the districts had significant population differences. The County was finally pushed to taking action in response to a suit<\/a> filed by a local resident with the help of the ACLU of Indiana<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

\nIn taking this opportunity to redistrict, the County also addressed its prison gerrymandering problem. The incarcerated population counted at the federal prison complex would have made up 13% of District 4 if it had been included in the redistricting data, undermining the County’s attempt to draw fair districts with equal populations.
\nCounty Attorney Michael Wright explained<\/a> the County’s solution: <\/p>\n

\u201cOnce we declare that we are not considering the federal penitentiary\u2019s population for purposes of calculation, the proposed plan would bring the precincts with one and a third percent of each other in terms of population.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nWhen the districts are finalized by an upcoming Council vote, Vigo County will join the Indiana cities of Terre Haute<\/a> and Crown Point as well as over 200 other local governments<\/a> nationwide in ensuring equal representation by avoiding prison gerrymandering.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vigo County will vote to approve a redistricting plan that excludes the incarcerated population at the Terre Haute Federal Correctional Complex.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[30],"class_list":["post-6941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6941","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\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6941\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6941"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=6941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}