Prisoner Count Benefits Rural Districts

nytimes.com — Concerns about so-called prison-based gerrymandering have grown as the number of inmates around the nation has ballooned. Similar disparities have been identified in upstate New York, Tennessee and Wisconsin. Critics say the census should count prisoners in the district where they lived before they were incarcerated. In 2006, experts commissioned by the Census Bureau recommended that the agency study whether prison inmates should be counted in 2010 as residents of the mostly urban neighborhoods where they last lived rather than as residents of the mostly rural districts where they are temporarily housed against their will. Any such change would probably require Congressional approval. It could benefit Democrats, since it would add population to the party’s urban strongholds and subtract from the Republican-dominated rural areas where most prisons are.

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