For Immediate Release: January 28, 2010
Contact: Cleo Oliver; Charlie Albanetti
Coalition Launches Campaign to End Prison-Based Gerrymandering in New York
Community Groups Call on Legislature to Count People in Prison at Home for Redistricting
New York, NY – In an effort to help establish more fair and accurate representation in New York elections, a coalition of voting rights and community advocates, joined by Senator Eric T. Schneiderman and Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries, rallied this morning to announce a new campaign to end the undemocratic system of prison-based gerrymandering. The coalition supports legislation that will count people in prison as residents of their home communities, rather than as residents of the districts in which they are incarcerated. The current system for counting people in prison drastically inflates populations in some communities, thereby violating the democratic principle of “one person, one vote.”
Because New York counts people in prison as being residents of their place of confinement, the political power of their home communities is significantly diluted. More power is given to rural districts with prisons, at the expense of communities with larger voting populations, especially urban communities and communities of color. In New York, seven State Senate districts would not meet minimum residency requirements if the prison population was not counted.
Senator Schneiderman will introduce the legislation in the State Senate on Monday. Assemblyman Jeffries is the lead sponsor of the bill in the Assembly.
“Equal representation under the law benefits everyone,” said Senator Eric T. Schneiderman, the lead sponsor of the bill to end prison-based gerrymandering. “The practice of counting people where they are incarcerated undermines the fundamental principle of ‘one person, one vote’ – it’s undemocratic and reflects a broken system. This legislation is as simple as it is fair: it requires that legislative districts at every level of government contain an equal numbers of residents. The time to act is now, we can’t afford to wait ten more years to right this wrong.”
Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries said, “This bill is necessary to break the back of the prison industrial complex where some communities benefit from the criminalization of young people who disproportionally come from low-income neighborhoods across the state. Prison-based gerrymandering is unfair, unethical and unconstitutional and we will not rest until the process is changed.”
Andrew Sloane, NYC AIDS Housing Network leader said, “Having people counted where they are imprisoned instead of where they’re from hurts low-income communities & communities of color by taking away their political representation. My family lost so much by losing me for ten years. Why did they, and my community, also have to lose part of their political identity? This is not just an upstate versus downstate issue. For ten years I was moved from Sing Sing in Ossining, Greenhaven in Stormville and Fishscale in Beacon. Every place I moved I met people from urban areas like Buffalo, Syracuse, Rochester and New York City. All of us knew our bodies were being used to draw political lines, while our hearts, beliefs & political views were missed back home”
“Our communities have suffered without fair and equal representation for long enough,” said Cleo Oliver, Statewide Campaign Coordinator for the Public Policy and Education Fund of New York. “This new statewide coalition will work to restore democracy in New York.”
“Today marks a very important milestone in New York’s attempts to get a fair, accurate and democratic count of all New York residents in the upcoming census,” said Steven Carbo, Senior Program Director at Demos. “We applaud State Senator Eric Schneiderman and Assembly Member Hakeem Jeffries for their leadership in getting incarcerated persons counted as residents of their home communities, as directed by the state constitution. We will continue to rob those neighborhoods of population-based political power if we exclude prisoners from their census count.”
Eddie Ellis, executive director, Center for NuLeadership on Urban Solutions, Medgar Evers College, CUNY, said, “this critical piece of legislation speaks to the fundamental principle of a participatory democracy, namely: ‘one man/woman, one vote.’ In additional to violating the constitution of the state of New York regarding residency, the current census counting process for incarcerated people also violates the ‘one man/woman, one vote’ principle in as much as it assigns disproportionate representation to certain counties to the detriment of others. As such, this process must be changed.”
“When the Census tallies incarcerated people at prison locations far from home, the picture of the American civic community is distorted, with profound ramifications for our democracy,” says Erika Wood of the Brennan Center for Justice. “The policy gives public officials in prison districts an incentive to build their districts on the backs of ‘ghost voters,’ packing in prisoners who count toward the district size but who are not permitted to vote,” says Wood.
“New York State is undermining the core American principles of fairness and equal representation by pretending that inmates are legitimate constituents of the districts where they are incarcerated,” said New York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Donna Lieberman. “Our state must end this corruption of the political process and count all New Yorkers as members of their home communities.”
“Common Cause/NY applauds Senator Schneiderman and Assembly Member Jeffries for their leadership in righting an obvious wrong,” said Susan Lerner, Executive Director of Common Cause/NY. She added, “In order to achieve fairly drawn legislative and congressional districts and insure the efficient use of scare government resources, it is essential that the census miscount of incarcerated New Yorkers not be the basis for redistricting and distribution of resources. Article II, Sec. 4 of our state constitution demands no less.”
The coalition includes these organizations: Citizen Action of New York, the Prison Policy Initiative, New York Civil Liberties Union, Demos, Common Cause/NY, the Brennan Center for Justice, Fortune Society, Bronx Defenders, Praxis Project, Correctional Association of New York, Community Service Society, New York City AIDS Housing Network (NYCAHN), Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Center for Law & Social Justice, Nu Leadership Policy Group, Prison Families of New York, Exponents, Public Policy and Education Fund of New York, National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, Reducing Recidivism, Western New York Reentry, Back To Basics Outreach Ministries, Community Voices Heard, Prisoners Are People Too and Center for Community Alternatives.
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