ACLU: Prison Gerrymandering. What it is, and what to do about it.
Prison gerrymandering is the process by which people who are incarcerated are counted as "residents" not of the places where they lived prior to incarceration, but of districts housing incarceration facilities.
The average time served by people incarcerated in state prisons is 2.6 years, but Census redistricting only takes place once every ten years. This means that people are counted as residents of their prison facilities long after they are released.
Many of these prison facilities were constructed in rural areas, ensuring a steady flow of captive constituents to those districts
Today, there are 2.3 million people incarcerated across the country. Most are unable to vote, and the representatives of the districts they are housed in don't see themselves accountable to those constituents.
The simplest way to end prison gerrymandering would be for the Census Bureau to count people at their pre-incarceration addresses.
Prison gerrymandering allows electoral maps to be drawn that underrepresent marginalized communities. Only when incarcerated people are rightfully seen as residents of the places they lived, will our maps reflect the constitutionally enshrined right to be fairly represented.
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