• Home
  • Opinion
  • Quizzes
  • Redistricting
  • Sections
  • About Us
  • Voting
  • Events
  • Civic Ed
  • Campaign Finance
  • Directory
  • Election Dissection
  • Fact Check
  • Glossary
  • Independent Voter News
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. Redistricting>
  3. prison gerrymandering>

Ending prison gerrymandering is mainly justice for people on the outside

Sara Miller
November 12, 2020
Prison
SPmemory/Getty Images
Miller is on the staff of the Bridge Alliance, a coalition of more than 100 civic engagement and democracy reform groups. (The Bridge Alliance Education Fund is a funder of The Fulcrum.)

The turmoil that coronavirus has exacerbated is shining a spotlight on such previously under-discussed topics as race, inequality and the criminal justice system. Yet at least one critical source of systemic inequality is still not getting attention: the fundamentally unfair practice of prison gerrymandering.

Only nine states have done away with this practice. There is still a little time for more to join them before all the nation's political lines are redrawn for the coming decade, the comprehensive redistricting that will start next year when population count details from the census are reported.

There are several clear but troubling aspects to the prison population. First, it is disproportionately people of color. Two years ago 56 percent of the people incarcerated were Black or Hispanic, with Black men six times more likely and Hispanic men almost three times as likely to be behind bars as white men.

Prisoners of all kinds also earn much less prior to imprisonment than their non-incarcerated counterparts, and they suffer from high rates of coronavirus, mental illness, addiction problems and histories of abuse.

Clearly, addressing all the needs of these disadvantaged people is hindered by the fact that they have very limited political influence. Or do they?

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

More than 2 million Americans are behind bars, yet their political influence continues to haunt the legislative districts where they are incarcerated. These "ghost" constituents are a product of prison gerrymandering.

Prison gerrymandering is when incarcerated people are counted, for redistricting purposes, as residents of the area where they are being housed instead of where they lived prior to prison. This inflates the populations of the mainly rural towns and counties where the prisons are, increasing their political influence. But incarcerated people are rarely viewed as genuine constituents by the elected officials who benefited from this mapmaking trickery.

The Census Bureau has counted inmates as prison residents since 1850 and now legitimizes prison gerrymandering through its "usual residence" rule, which says people should be counted where they live and sleep most of the time. But this rarely helps the mostly urban areas that incarcerated people call home. It skews data on household income, poverty and other socioeconomic measurements, generally making the cities look a bit wealthier than they actually are — and making places with prisons look more impoverished than they actually are.

Correcting this is important now, because otherwise the allocation of more than $600 billion in federal funding over the next decade will be unfairly askew.

If prisoners were counted in their hometowns, those places would get more aid targeted to low-income communities — money that might help them emerge from multi-generational stretches of high incarceration as well as poverty.

At the same time, communities with prisons are also suffering. When the decline in farming and manufacturing spread economic stress across rural America in the 1980s, building penitentiaries looked like an economic lifeline. It has not turned out that way.

Locals did not get construction jobs because they lacked the right skills and union cards. Correction officers were brought in from miles away. Low-skill jobs that had been filled by locals got handed instead to prisoners making 40 cents an hour. And other companies decided they did not want to put their factories or call centers next to prisons.

So who are the beneficiaries of prison gerrymandering? Rural legislators, more than anyone.

They have had the power to draw lines embracing their most loyal constituents on the outside, perpetuating themselves in office without much responsibility for addressing the needs of their temporary constituents on the inside. (They do note, however, that the status quo allows them to more easily fight for funds to keep roads and services moving toward the prisons.)

There's little doubt that power and partisanship play a larger role than many admit in keeping things as they are. As a general rule, city lawmakers are as reliably Democratic as rural legislators are lopsidedly Republican, and politicians in both parties will almost always revert to opportunistic power-grabbing whenever the rules benefit them best.

Note how all the states that have ended prison gerrymandering are for now reliably blue: Virginia, Colorado and New Jersey did so this year, with Nevada and Washington last year and California, Delaware, Maryland and New York before that. Opportunities exist for purple and red states to join them open when legislatures convene in the new year.

Prison gerrymandering is one way of taking power from one disadvantaged community and giving it to another disadvantaged community. Prisons haven't revitalized rural America, incarcerated people are being told they officially live in places where they have no political voice, and urban communities are being deprived of political power and critical resources.

Perhaps this unfairness is perpetuated because prisoners get branded as undeserving. Taking away their voice is a reinforcement of their disempowerment — a reminder they can't have a voice, either back home or where they are behind bars. Whatever the fate of the debate about the political rights of prisoners, we should also debate whether it's right to deprive their home communities. There is no doubt that criminals should pay their debt to society, but the payment of that debt has nothing to do with the process of prison gerrymandering.

It is time that we recognize this injustice for what it is — a perpetuation of systemic dysfunction.

From Your Site Articles
  • Florida joins debate over where to count prisoners when drawing ... ›
  • Federal court to hear challenge to prison gerrymandering - The ... ›
  • Bill to stop 'prison gerrymandering' advances in New Jersey - The ... ›
  • End to prison gerrymandering in Colorado could shift power - The ... ›
  • Virginia becoming 9th state to end 'prison gerrymandering' - The ... ›
Related Articles Around the Web
  • Prison Gerrymandering Distorts Our Democracy in the Worst Ways ... ›
  • States move to outlaw 'prison gerrymandering': Where do inmates ... ›
  • Stuck With Census Policy, More States Pass Laws To End 'Prison ... ›
  • Prison Gerrymandering Project ›
prison gerrymandering

Want to write
for The Fulcrum?

If you have something to say about ways to protect or repair our American democracy, we want to hear from you.

Submit
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Follow
Contributors

Reform in 2023: Leadership worth celebrating

Layla Zaidane

Two technology balancing acts

Dave Anderson

Reform in 2023: It’s time for the civil rights community to embrace independent voters

Jeremy Gruber

Congress’ fix to presidential votes lights the way for broader election reform

Kevin Johnson

Democrats and Republicans want the status quo, but we need to move Forward

Christine Todd Whitman

Reform in 2023: Building a beacon of hope in Boston

Henry Santana
Jerren Chang
latest News

Family values and societal results

Debilyn Molineaux
17h

Transpartisanship and transformation

Brenda Marinace
17h

Podcast: Why we misunderstand independent voters

Our Staff
17h

The American experiment

Kevin Frazier
24 January

The Fahey Q&A with Jasmine Hull of Deliberations.US

Katie Fahey
Courtney Fiedler
24 January

Podcast: What does the House Speaker election say about the Republican Party?

Our Staff
24 January
Videos

Video: Meet the citizen activists championing primary reform

Our Staff

Video: Veterans for Political Innovation - Who we are

Our Staff

Video: Want to fight polarization? Take a vacation!

Our Staff

Video: Kevin McCarthy is Speaker, but he's got a tough job ahead

Our Staff

Video: #ListenFirst Friday End of Year

Our Staff

Video: Minnesota Gov. Walz asks fellow Democrats to ‘Think Big’ when it comes to fixing voting issues

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: Why we misunderstand independent voters

Our Staff
17h

Podcast: What does the House Speaker election say about the Republican Party?

Our Staff
24 January

Video: Chaos or calm: Building confidence in Pennsylvania elections

Our Staff
19 January

Podcast: Pushing back against polarization

Our Staff
18 January
Recommended
Family values and societal results

Family values and societal results

Big Picture
Transpartisanship and transformation

Transpartisanship and transformation

Big Picture
Podcast: Why we misunderstand independent voters

Podcast: Why we misunderstand independent voters

Podcasts
image of Statue of Liberty and American flag.

The American experiment

Civic Ed
Jasmine Hull is Chief Operating Officer for Deliberations.US.

The Fahey Q&A with Jasmine Hull of Deliberations.US

Civic Ed
Podcast: What does the House Speaker election say about the Republican Party?

Podcast: What does the House Speaker election say about the Republican Party?

Podcasts