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| Prisoners of the Census |
| By progressivestates.org/ |
| Published: 09/16/2009 |
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Currently, 1 in 100 American adults are now behind bars, with over 1.3 million Americans in state or federal correctional institutions (and close to a million more are in local jails). This explosion of our prison population since the beginning of the "war on drugs" in the 1970's has meant the bloating of state budgets, the crowding out of essential services, the destruction of many communities, and robbing many young people of their future. Less well reported is the way the census counts prisoners, which results in political distortions that undermine the principle of one person, one vote. This Dispatch will outline the serious problems that counting prisoners where they are incarcerated, instead of where they lived before their conviction, has caused for governance at the state and local level, as well as for the small number of communities from which the majority of prisoners come. Instead, states around the country have introduced legislation to determine both redistricting for elections and state funding based on the home community of the incarcerated, a key reform to achieve both democratic results and economic justice within our states. Where We Count Prisoners and Why it Matters Currently the Census Bureau counts prisoners as residing at their place of incarceration. While this serves the constitutional purpose of the census - determining the relative populations of the states for congressional reapportionment - it has in the past few decades resulted in significant unintended consequences. The two main secondary purposes of the census are state and local legislative reapportionment, and determining funding for federal grants that are based on population or demographics. For these uses the distortions in population counts caused by prisons can and do throw the process out of whack. The most extreme examples happen at the local level, where a prison can represent a population cluster larger than any local town, or all of them combined. But effects are also felt at the state level, where the prison boom made "prison towns" of many sparsly populated rural communities. This can boost the population of rural state legislative districts enough that without the prisons they wouldn't have enough residents to constitute a complete district. Read More. |
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