{"id":8922,"date":"2016-09-06T15:35:46","date_gmt":"2016-09-06T19:35:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/?p=8922"},"modified":"2020-12-18T21:11:37","modified_gmt":"2020-12-19T02:11:37","slug":"comment2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/2016\/09\/06\/comment2016\/","title":{"rendered":"Prison Policy Initiative dispels the myth that a prison cell is a \u201cusual residence\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"PPI<\/a><\/p>\n

Last year, the Census Bureau requested comments on the 2020 Decennial Census Residence Rule and Residence Situations<\/a> and received 162 comments on the topic of where to count incarcerated people. 96% of these comments<\/a> favored counting incarcerated people at their home addresses. But the Bureau ignored the overwhelming public input and, in June, announced plans<\/a> to continue the outdated and inaccurate practice of counting incarcerated people as \u201cresidents\u201d of prison locations.<\/p>\n

The Census Bureau seeks to count everyone at his or her \u201cusual residence,\u201d defined as the place where a person \u201ceats and sleeps most of the time.\u201d In our response<\/a> to the Bureau\u2019s latest request for comments, we and our partners at Dēmos make it clear that a prison cell is not a usual residence under this definition, and the consequences of the prison miscount extend far beyond correctional facility walls.<\/p>\n

Our comment letter makes four key arguments:<\/p>\n

\n

Apart from how short a time any given person spends at any given facility, the total length of individual sentences of persons in state prisons is much shorter than is routinely assumed. (pp 2-5)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Other similarly situated people are counted at home, while incarcerated people are strangely singled out to be counted in the wrong place. (pp 5-11) <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

We believe, on factual, practical, and legal grounds, that the Bureau is incorrect in asserting that it can cede all responsibility for producing useful redistricting data to state governments. (pp 11-13)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Most people in the country are harmed by prison gerrymandering to one extent or another. (pp 13-15)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As more and more jurisdictions<\/a> are eliminating prison gerrymandering within their borders, and federal courts twice<\/a> this year<\/a> declared prison gerrymandering unconstitutional, the Census Bureau should heed the growing consensus and count incarcerated people in the right place in the next Census.<\/p>\n

Though we think it\u2019s a good read, our full comment letter<\/a> is 18 pages long. So we summarized the main arguments and data in one handy fact sheet<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our comment letter to the Census Bureau makes four key arguments for ending prison gerrymandering.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[45],"class_list":["post-8922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8922","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\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8922"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9594,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8922\/revisions\/9594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8922"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=8922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}