Inmate census rule criticized

Times Union

Albany, NY

http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=894736&category=STATE

Bill proposes counting prisoners in their home communities instead of where they’re jailed

By BRYAN FITZGERALD

ALBANY — Two Democratic state lawmakers joined forces with the Rev. Al Sharpton to support a bill Thursday requiring New York to count its prison inmates in their home communities rather than the districts where they’re incarcerated.

The longtime U.S. Census Bureau guideline was denounced as “prison-based gerrymandering” by Sen. Eric Schneiderman, D-Manhattan, and Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries, D-Brooklyn, who were joined by Sharpton and more than two dozen advocacy groups at a news conference at New York City Hall.

“This is an injustice all across America,” Schneiderman said. “We pass hundreds and hundreds of bills every year about highways and forestry and insurance and sewers. This bill is different. This bill is about justice.”

Sharpton said the Census Bureau currently “uses people’s bodies to vote against their interest.” He called fighting the policy “the voter rights and the civil rights issue of this year in the state of New York.”

The Census, to be conducted this spring and summer, will be used to guide reapportionment and redistricting across the nation. Legislative and congressional seats and billions of dollars in state and federal aid at stake.

The bill, which has been tweaked in recent weeks, directs the state Department of Correctional Services to submit residential data on prisoners — including their last known address before incarceration — to the state legislative task force that collects the data used in redrawing the state’s political map. The task force would be required to use the DOCS information to adjust the Census count.

The current Census Bureau guidelines allow districts that contain prisons to use the non-voting, incarcerated population to secure greater legislative representation at the expense of the prisoners’ home districts many of which are badly in need of the additional resources that would come with enhanced representation, critics said.

Alice Green, executive director for the Center of Law and Justice in Albany, has opposed the Census policy for more than two decades. “Prisoners are not allowed to vote, but yet we count them and then exploit them,” she said.

Because of the location of most state prisons, Census Bureau policy tends to benefit the upstate population count.

New York’s rural 45th Senate District, which includes Clinton, Essex, Franklin, Hamilton, Warren and Washington counties, houses over 13,500 inmates incarcerated in 13 prisons.

Queensbury Republican Sen. Elizabeth Little, who has represented the district since 2002, supports the current Census Bureau guidelines.

“How do we know these people are going to go back to their hometowns once — or if — they are released?,” Little said. “Are they serving life sentences? Do they still have family in their hometowns?”

The chances of the Census Bureau changing its policy this year appear remote.

“Our guidelines are not likely to change,” said Zoi Kalaitzidis, an assistant regional manager for the bureau’s Boston office, which oversees New York’s count. “The communities that are paying for the living expenses of these prisoners will continue to receive their representation in the Census.”

Bryan Fitzgerald is a University at Albany student and a Times Union Capitol bureau intern. He can be reached at 454-5452 or bfitzgerald@timesunion.com.