Gotham Gazette – The Wonkster
New York, NY
http://www.gothamgazette.com/blogs/wonkster/2010/01/29/counting-inmates/
By David King
Sen. Eric Schneiderman, Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries and Rev. Al Sharpton took the redistricting war publicyesterday when they announced their support for legislation that would see inmates counted for redistricting purposes at their last known addresses, not at the prisons that hold them.
The 2010 census will reshape the electoral map, and currently upstate prisons give the districts that hold them a large boost in population. Democrats know counting prisoners by their addresses will likely give them an edge in the redistricting fight, as a good deal of the inmate population is from downstate. They say the poor districts these largely minority prisoners come from are in desperate need of resources and suffer because their true population is not tallied.
“The present rule takes people who come from and return to poor or black and Latino communities and transfers their value for reapportionment purposes to rural upstate districts that really have nothing to do with them,” said Schneiderman.
The legislation would require the Department of Correctional Services to submit the last known addresses of inmates to the state task force that collects data for reapportionment. The task force would use the data to adjust the census count. The policy of the Census Bureau is unlikely to change. Officials say they will continue to count inmates in the communities that pay for their care. New York would be the first state to count inmates at their districts for the purpose of redistricting.
Civil rights activists say the move is simply the just thing to do. Republican legislators from upstate districts argue there is no way to know if prisoners will actually return to the districts they came from when they are released from prison. They point out that some prisoners will remain locked up for life.
