Coalition Praises Lawmakers for Ending Prison Gerrymandering

Budget Action Will Bring Greater Fairness to
Drawing Lines for Legislative Districts

Albany, NY — The Coalition to End Prison-Based Gerrymandering, a coalition of over 70 statewide policy, advocacy, civil rights, good government and community organizations, thanked lawmakers today for passing legislation to end the unjust and undemocratic practice of prison-based gerrymandering. If signed into law by Governor Paterson, New York will join Maryland, Delaware and 13 upstate New York counties, including Wyoming, Washington, Sullivan, Cayuga, Chemung, Clinton, and Franklin, that have already ended prison-based gerrymandering and adopted a fairer method of apportioning political power.

“For decades incarcerated individuals have been used by state politicians as pawns, giving more representation to some communities and less to others,” said Karen Scharff, Executive Director of Citizen Action of New York, the convener of the Coalition to End Prison-based Gerrymandering. “The Senate and Assembly took courageous action today that will mean fairer representation for every New Yorker. Now it is up to Governor Paterson to sign the bill into law and end the undemocratic, unconstitutional and racist practice of prison-based gerrymandering.”

Prison-based gerrymandering is an antiquated practice by which state legislative district lines are drawn based on Census population counts that include people in prison as residents of their place of incarceration, instead of their home communities. This practice drastically inflates the political representation of some communities, and dilutes the representation of all other communities. Today, the legislature, as part of the revenue bill, fixed the broken system by requiring people in prison to be counted in their home communities for the purposes of redrawing district lines. The original legislation to end prison-based gerrymandering was sponsored by Senator Eric Schneiderman and Assembly Member Hakeem Jeffries. The legislation will not affect the distribution of federal funding.

“We applaud the State Legislature for including in the budget the important provision that will restore the principle of one person, one vote that is fundamental to our democracy,” said New York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Donna Lieberman. “The strength of your vote shouldn’t depend on if your legislative district contains a prison or not, and the passage of this provision brings fairness to voting in New York.”

If today’s bill is signed by the Governor, New York would become the third state in the nation to prohibit prison-based gerrymandering. Maryland’s Governor signed a similar bill into law in April of this year. The Delaware bill will be signed by their Governor soon.

The law will impact New York’s next set of district lines scheduled to be drawn in 2012. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, prison-based gerrymandering distorts State Senate, Assembly, municipal and county districts. Seven of the current New York State Senate districts meet minimum population requirements only by claiming incarcerated people as residents, and in some rural municipal and county districts, half of the population is incarcerated.

“All upstate residents who live near but not immediately adjacent to a large prison will benefit from this bill which requires the corrected counts to be used in municipal and county redistricting. Municipal and county districts are smaller than state legislative districts, so the impact of prison-based gerrymandering is very dramatic. For example, under the new law the Rome City Council will no longer be able to use prison populations to give one ward twice the influence warranted by its actual population,” said Peter Wagner, Executive Director the Prison Policy Initiative and author of numerous reports on prison-based gerrymandering in New York and nationally.

“When I was being counted upstate when I was in prison, the community that I came from was being punished as well by having their vote diluted. It doesn’t make political sense to be counted in a place where you can’t vote and don’t use services. This bill isn’t about money or jobs, it’s about political power,” said Ramon Velasquez, a leader in Voices Of Community Advocates & Leaders (VOCAL) and New York City AIDS Housing Network (NYCAHN).

“Passage of the prison-based gerrymandering legislation championed by Senator Eric Schneiderman and Assembly Member Hakeem Jeffries is a huge victory for democracy. The new law promises a fair and equal division of political representation across the state,” said Steven Carbó, Senior Program Director at Demos.

“People who have been incarcerated know that a prison cell is not a home. Passing this law that eliminates prison-based gerrymandering recognizes that fact and brings New York State one step closer to ending the treatment of people in prison as a commodity,” said Alan Rosenthal, Co-Director of Justice Strategies at Center for Community Alternatives.

“For too long New York legislative districts have been constructed on the backs of ‘ghost voters,’ packing in prisoners who counted towards the district size but who were not permitted to vote. At the same time, the home communities – to which the vast majority of incarcerated people return – were severely under-represented in our government,” said Erika Wood of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law. “Today the legislature assured that all communities in New York have equal representation and an equal voice in our government. We urge Governor Paterson to sign this landmark legislation into law,” said Wood.

“When community members from across the state come together, we can right historic injustices, as the passage of the measure ending prison-based gerrymandering shows,” said Susan Lerner, Executive Director of Common Cause/NY. “To have effective political representation, we need a fair and equitable drawing of political district lines. We at Common Cause/NY hope that this is the first step towards reforming our state’s redistricting process, so that it is no longer politically controlled.”

“Prison-based gerrymandering violates the basic principle of one person, one vote — that all individuals should have an equal voice in the democratic process. By rejecting this practice, the New York legislature has taken a tremendous step forward, toward an electoral system that will represent all communities fairly and equally. We urge Governor Paterson to sign this important legislation into law immediately, which would speak to his commitment to civil rights and basic principles of equality,” said Dale Ho, Assistant Counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.

“Citizens Union is pleased that the practice of prison-based gerrymandering is nearing an end with the legislature taking a welcome action by passing needed reforms to count prisoners at their residences prior to incarceration rather that the prisons where they serve sentences. The practice of counting prisoners in districts in which they can’t even vote is nothing more than a political game of three card monte. Like the game, the prisoners get shuffled around and someone else gains at their expense,” said Citizens Union Executive Director Dick Dadey. “We urge the Governor to approve this important reform, and encourage the legislature to pass other needed redistricting reforms.”

“Prison-based gerrymandering is unconstitutional and violates a basic principle of democracy by diluting the political power of people of color. Ending this process will help ensure that all people in New York State count equally and have fair political representation,” said Emily NaPier, Justice Task Force Chairperson at Alliance of Communities Transforming Syracuse.

“Counting prisoners where they are incarcerated punishes families and communities. We applaud the New York State Legislature for taking a step in the right direction,” Melanie Campbell, President & CEO of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation.

“Disproportionate representation of Blacks and Latinos in this country’s criminal justice system and across New York’s prisons has led to racially skewed political influence. For decades, communities that are already dealing with family separation, income loss, and stigma have also seen their political power diluted. This legislation will change that, and restore full voice and representation to the South Bronx and many other neighborhoods statewide,” said Robin Steinberg, Executive Director, The Bronx Defenders.

For more information about the Coalition to End Prison-Based Gerrymandering, visit http://CorrectTheCount.org.

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Prison-Based Gerrymandering

We need a massive groundswell of grassroots support right now into the State Capitol to end prison-based gerrymandering.

Click the ‘take action’ button below right now to send a message to your State Senator and Assemblymember right now!

The Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-lotke/the-census-and-democracy_b_536924.html

In the wake of the 2010 Census, Maryland passed a law yesterday that fixes a major problem. Maryland will now count people in prison where they actually live, not where they are confined. This first-in-the-nation law will improve the fairness and accuracy of Census data used to draw legislative boundaries.

Eighteen percent of the population credited to Maryland House of Delegates District 2B (near Hagerstown) is actually incarcerated people shipped in from other parts of the state. In Somerset County, 64 percent of the population in the First Commission District is a large prison, giving each resident in that district nearly three times as much influence as residents in other districts. People in prison are generally not permitted to vote, but their bodies still count for purposes of legislative apportionment.

The problem goes beyond Maryland. The official rule of the U.S. Census Bureau is to count people where they are confined — even though most people sent to prison were convicted of relatively minor crimes and will serve less than three years, returning to their actual homes long before the next decennial census. The misplaced headcount distorts democracy.

The effect has racial and ethnic consequences as well. More people in prison come from urban, minority, Democratic-leaning districts. They are sent to prisons in rural, white, Republican-leaning districts. It’s not quite a return to the three-fifths clause, but the electoral impact leans in that direction. Nationwide, more than ten percent (pdf, table 19) of African American men in their twenties and thirties wakes up in custody on any given day. When I ran the numbers in 2005, the figure in Baltimore was one in five. These numbers are too high for all kinds of reasons — but the impact on redistricting carves it into the bones of our democracy.

Still, the Census Bureau has stubbornly refused to change its rules and count people in prison in the location that they come from and return to. It has conceded for the 2010 census to release its micro data early enough that states and counties who choose to can reassess prison jurisdictions in time for reapportionment. But Maryland sets a new standard by taking matters into its own hands. Technical matters of implementation will need to be worked out (they have ten years!) but the law states a clear legislative intent. Constituents are not exportable commodities.

Credit where due: Peter Wagner and the Prison Policy Initiative have been advocating for these changes for years. The New York Times has editorialized against it. And my own personal brag: I helped uncover this issue ten years ago, and published the first mainstream documentation in the Pace Law Review.

The governor and the legislature in Maryland just plain got it right. If enough other states follow their lead, the Census Bureau will have no choice but to do it right next time.

New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/opinion/15thu3.html

Maryland struck a blow for electoral fairness this week with a new law requiring that prison inmates be counted at their home addresses when legislative districts are redrawn after the 2010 census. Other states should follow.

Counting inmates as residents — prison-based gerrymandering — inflates populations and exaggerates the power of the mainly rural districts where prisons tend to get built. It undercuts the power of the mainly urban districts where the inmates come from, their families live, and to which they return after release.

With 1.4 million inmates nationally, the practice of drawing districts around prisons can easily shift a state’s balance of legislative power. And while most states have laws saying that prisons are not legitimate residences, the practice persists for reasons of politics or inertia. Since the national census does not ask for prisoners’ home addresses, to get the right count, state bureaucracies need to use other available records.

Lawmakers in Maryland acted after learning how the prison count had distorted their political landscape. In one state legislative district, nearly a fifth of the population are inmates, most of whom hail from elsewhere in the state. In one county commission district, inmates account for 64 percent of the population.

Studies have shown that many states have districts that would probably be illegal had they not been padded with inmates who often come from hundreds of miles away. More than a half dozen states seem poised to follow Maryland’s example. That is an important start. The best solution is for the Census Bureau to begin counting inmates at their homes beginning with the 2020 census.

Even if their sentence ends today, the census still counts them as residents of the town or city where they were imprisoned on April 1 – not as residents of the communities where they lived before going to prison and to which they are most likely to return.

Perhaps by 2020, the federal government will affirm its commitment to one person, one vote and finally recognize that a prison cell is not a residence. Until then, state legislatures, including New York’s, must do what they can to correct the count.

Utica, NY

http://www.wktv.com/internal?st=print&id=89745552&path=/news/local

ALBANY, N.Y. (WKTV) – A proposed change to how the census counts prisoners would not effect funding.

According to Peter Wagner of the Prison Policy Initiative , there is no mention of federal funding in the legislation. Wagner says the purpose of the bill is solely to impact redistricting practices.

Several local leaders recently complained that the area would lose funding if the proposal becomes a law.

Currently, a prisoner is counted in the municipality where he is incarcerated. The Schneiderman/Jeffries bill would change that, having inmates counted in their home town.

Charles Albonetti of Citizen Action in New York says the legislation would restore fairness and democracy.

“One person, One vote,” Albonetti said. “People who live near prisons are getting more voting power and hence more political influence.”

How can that be?

Representative bodies must represent an equal number of people. That means all State Senate districts must be roughly equal. The same can be said for Board of Legislators districts and City Council wards.

For example, each Rome City Council ward is made up of about 5,000 people. 49% of the 2nd ward’s population is prisoners. That leaves only about 2,500 non-prisoners in the district. Meaning 2nd ward’s councilman is only representing about 2,500 people. As opposed to the 3rd district’s councilman, who represents 5,000 people. Each council member only has one vote. Thereby each council member has the same voting power. But because of the how prisoners are counted, not each individual is getting the same value from their representative.

Wagner points out that the census is only taken once every decade, but most prison sentences are less than ten years. And according to the Parole Board, most prisoners return to their home town upon release. So the current method of counting is weighed more in favor of localities with prisons.

Wagner also says the current counting practice is unconstitutional. According to Article 2, Section 4, of the New York State Constitution, incarceration does not change residency.

But funding and representation is not all State Senator Joseph Griffo is concerned about. The republican from the 47th District wants to make sure downstate does not have all the say.

“The real message here is that the people who want to change the system want to use it as a way to reduce the ability of Upstate New York to stand up and resist changes that are being pushed down our throats by Downstate politicians,” Griffo said. “Anyone living in this state in the past three years should be able to see that we need a stronger Upstate and not a weaker one.”

So far, 13 counties from across the state have adopted the new changes. Wagner hopes Oneida County will soon be added to that list.

“The biggest harm is it (the current system) changes the priorities of Upstate,” Wagner said.

Since 1976, all 43 new prisons in New York have been built in rural, largely white upstate communities. Furthermore, when the last round of redistricting happened in 2002, 7 upstate districts would not have met minimum population requirements if the prison population hadn’t been added to those districts. To add to the conscious practice of injustice, the redistricting in 2002 led to 2 chairs of criminal justice committees “representing” 17% of the state’s incarcerated persons. Senators Volker and Nozzolio have, unsurprisingly, been strong proponents of the dated and draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws, which mandate disproportionally long sentences for minor drug offenses.

Although 80% of the people incarcerated in New York are Black or Latino, 98% are incarcerated in districts that are disproportionally white. Do Senators Volker and Nozzolio really work for the betterment of the incarcerated population in their districts?–or just use their numbers to pad their districts population numbers at the expense of the home communities of those who are incarcerated?  Do they really work to ensure the fair and careful treatment and rehabilitation of New York citizens that cannot vote?–or have median incarceration times of less than 26 months?

Scholars agree that the Rockefeller Drug Laws did not just happen to result in high minority incarceration.

Our democracy is built on representation – equal representation. Prison-based gerrymandering results in representation without population to back it up. It’s not fair to any New Yorker.

The New York State Constitution is very clear. Incarceration does not change one’s residence. It’s time to restore ‘one person, one vote’ in New York. It’s time to pass S6725/A9834.

Senate District 45 - Graphic from the Prison Policy Initiative (http://prisonpolicy.org)

First some data:

Average population of a NY Senate District-306,072

State Senate District 45:

Census Population-299,603

Incarcerated Population-14,161

Resident Population-285,442

State and Federal Prisons-13

State Senate District 45 has the largest incarcerated population in New York, and this status began because former Senator Ronald Stafford rose to become the chair of the Finance Committee. Son of a correctional officer, he used his chairmanship to direct funds into his district for prison construction. In violation of our state’s constitution and the Supreme Court, Stafford prison-gerrymandered the make-up of his district–with democratic distortions that affect the entire state.

The voting population of all legislative districts must be as equal as possible. When people are counted as residents of a district that are so vastly different from their home communities, both districts suffer, as does everyone seeking fair and equal representation.

Essex County, one of the 6 counties in District 45, has passed a law against the use of prison-based Census data:

Persons incarcerated in state and federal correctional institutions live in a separate environment, do not participate int he life of Essex County and do not affect the social and economic character of the towns…The inclusion of these federal and state correctional inmates unfairly dilutes the votes or voting weight of persons residing in other towns within Essex County…

Essex County is one of 13 counties with prisons to adjust their population data they get from the Census for the purposes of redistricting.

Americans are strong proponents of fair, equal voting practices. Let us educate our friends and neighbors so they understand the effects of prison-based gerrymandering.