Prisons and the Census | Prisons and the Census

• Brenda Wright - Director

A fair and accurate census count is critical to our democracy, as census data are used to allocate congressional seats in state and local government. Yet research by Demos and its partners shows that the goal of fair representation is thwarted by the Census Bureau's current practices for counting prison populations.

The Census Bureau counts incarcerated persons as residents of the community where they are imprisoned, rather than as residents of the home communities that remain their legal residence for virtually all other purposes and to which the vast majority will return. Counting incarcerated persons as "residents" of prison communities enhances the political representation of disproportionately white communities where prisons typically are located, and dilutes the representation and voting power of the home communities of incarcerated persons - which are disproportionately urban and comprised of communities of color.

New York State provides a vivid illustration of how this can work. With all 43 of the new prisons in New York State since 1976 being built upstate, prison-based gerrymandering helped the New York State Senate add an extra district in the upstate region after the 2000 Census. Almost 44,000 persons from New York City--most of them African Americans or Latinos - were counted as residents of predominantly white upstate counties.

But the problem distorts representation in rural communities as well. In Anamosa, Iowa, a candidate won election to the City Council with a total of only two votes - from his wife and a neighbor - because 1,300 of the 1,400 persons in his city council district were inmates of Iowa's largest penitentiary. Only 58 persons were actually eligible to vote in the district - giving those 58 people the same representation as each 1,400 people in the rest of the city.

Demos is working for solutions to end the distortions in representation caused by prison-based gerrymandering. The Census Bureau should change its practice so that incarcerated persons are counted as residents of their home communities. Even without action by the Census Bureau, states and localities can correct the flawed census data when they draw their own state and local districts. Legislation to achieve such change is pending in New York and Illinois. About 100 rural counties and towns throughout the country also have taken steps to remove prison populations from the counts used in drawing local districts. Ending prison-based gerrymandering will enhance the fairness and accuracy of census counts for urban and rural communities alike and help realize the ideal of one person, one vote that is core to American democracy.

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