Prison gerrymandering conceals the power of locked-up votes
Counting inmates as constituents disproportionally affects people of color
The census practice of counting incarcerated individuals as residents of their prisons, like Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, Illinois, instead of residents of their home addresses, affects how district lines are drawn.. (Photo by Josh Sukoff/MEDILL TrialMonitors)
By Madeline King and Zack Siegel
Jay Young, executive director of Common Cause Illinois, worked alongside legislators and other activists to pass legislation to end prison gerrymandering in Illinois, aiming to increase the equality of political representation in the state by counting incarcerated people as members of their home communities when drawing district lines.
“Why people talk about and say they need to fix prison gerrymandering is that they need to correct a problem that the U.S. Census Bureau has created for us,” Young said.
Prison gerrymandering results from the practice of counting incarcerated individuals as residents of their prison instead of residents of their home address, affecting how district lines are drawn. Experts say prison gerrymandering affects every person living in America, distorting each individual’s political power and representation.
“That’s ultimately what prison gerrymandering is — a form of insidious, largely invisible voter suppression,” said Brianna Remster, an associate professor of sociology and criminology at Villanova University researching prison gerrymandering.
Remster said people living in districts with prisons have more political power at the expense of those who do not live in a district with a prison, as the former group has easier access to their representatives and are more likely to have their concerns be taken seriously because they do not have to compete with the incarcerated population — who are still represented by officials in their home communities and cannot vote — to have their voices heard.
Illinois 16th state to take action
According to Prison Policy Initiative, 16 states have now taken some action, with varying approaches, against prison gerrymandering and 47% of people in America live in a state that has committed to such actions.
Illinois became one of the 16 states to take action to combat prison gerrymandering in January 2021 with the passage of the No Representation Without Population Act as a part of the Illinois Safety, Accountability, Fairness and Equity-Today Act, or SAFE-T Act.
The No Representation Without Population Act requires the Illinois Department of Corrections to collect the last known street address prior to incarceration of incarcerated individuals, as well as other data. The Illinois State Board of Elections will be mandated to use this address data when redistricting, counting incarcerated individuals as residents of their home addresses beginning during the redistricting cycle of 2030.
Young, who is also the senior director of voting and democracy for Common Cause, said he remains optimistic that the act could help to remedy the issue of unequal representation due to prison gerrymandering in his home state.
Remster said she is less confident in the act. According to her, the issues with the Illinois law lie in the fact that it neglects to count incarcerated people from out of state or without known addresses in a district and has a longer turnaround time to be implemented after its passage in comparison to legislation of other states.
Both Remster and Young said prison gerrymandering disproportionately affects communities of color. John Pfaff, a law professor at Fordham University, said he agrees, as the majority of the incarcerated population is made of Black and Hispanic men. These men count toward the prison district’s population — typically rural districts composed of predominantly white people — giving the district greater power although they cannot vote themselves, Pfaff said.
“It’s effectively using Black men and Hispanic men to bolster the voting power of conservative, rural, white people,” Pfaff said.
Race, class cited as reasons
Christina R. Rivers, the director of the DePaul Institute for Restorative Educational Engagement, said that many legislators do not view incarcerated individuals as their constituents.
“As a political scientist, that makes me itch,” Rivers said. “Because if you can’t vote, you’re still a member of the community.”
Reasons some officials neglect to view incarcerated populations as constituents include the fact that those in prisons cannot vote and are “hidden” from society, Rivers said, adding that other reasons may be tied to race and class demographics of incarcerated populations.
Rivers, who is also an associate professor of political science and a pre-law adviser at DePaul University, said it is important to note that not all political officials are “a ‘lock them up, throw the key away’ kind of person,” but much more still needs to be done to ensure that all legislators understand the importance of representing incarcerated people.
In agreement with Rivers, Brian Beals said that in his experience, incarcerated populations have no relationship with either representatives of their prison’s community or home community.
Beals spent 35 years in Illinois prisons for a wrongful conviction and said representatives “paid no attention to us at all.”
Beals added that access to representatives from inside prisons and eventually allowing for people to vote while incarcerated would benefit both those incarcerated and those not by making incarcerated individuals “stakeholders.”
“If people are connected to the politics of the areas that we come from and we be more engaged, I think it would really impact the levels of recidivism because we would have that community connection that we’ve lost because of incarceration,” Beals said.
For other formerly incarcerated activists, ending prison gerrymandering marks a step in the right direction for achieving enfranchisement for incarcerated individuals. Avalon Betts-Gaston, executive director of the Illinois Alliance for Reentry & Justice, said enfranchisement would help to solve issues of unequal political representation due to incarceration.
“Elected officials would have to pay attention to the conditions faced by people inside of prisons because those individuals can vote you in or vote you out,” Betts-Gaston said.
Betts-Gaston added that the carceral system has disproportionately silenced the voices of communities of color and low-income individuals through disenfranchisement and said that in her opinion, this power has been stripped on purpose.
When discussing the monetary aspect of the carceral system and prison gerrymandering, Remster, who published research on prison gerrymandering in 2018, said it is important to note that there are no direct benefits for districts with prisons when it comes to receiving government funding because the algorithms to determine federal funding are not based on population counts.
Remster’s research partner, Rory Kramer, echoed Remster’s statement and said it is a common misconception that prison gerrymandering has direct monetary impacts on districts.
“There’s not a state that we’ve talked to that someone hasn’t brought up funding either as a reason to fix it or a reason not to fix it,” Kramer said.
According to Prison Policy Initiative, prison gerrymandering does not lead to increased government funding for districts with prisons.
Kramer, an associate professor of sociology and criminology at Villanova University, said people may also be surprised to learn that prison gerrymandering is typically not created based on political party lines.
“I expected that there would be a really big partisan skew — that this would be a story of harming Democratic districts and benefitting Republican districts,” Kramer said. “We don’t really see that.”
On the other hand, Pfaff, a Joel Reidenberg Distinguished Research Scholar at Fordham University, said there is somewhat of a partisan aspect to prison gerrymandering. He said legislation against prison gerrymandering has only been passed when Democrats control the state House and Senate under a Democratic governor.
Pfaff also said that the issue of prison gerrymandering is “underappreciated but fairly straightforward.”
Furthering Pfaff’s argument, Kathy Cortez, vice president of issues and advocacy for the League of Women Voters of Illinois, said she thinks the public understands the importance of equal political representation.
Cortez said she believes the public would welcome any step taken to ensure American democracy functions properly, including the step to abolish prison gerrymandering, once they are aware of the issue.
“Anything we can do to continue to drive home that representation and the integrity of ensuring that representation for individuals and the communities they technically reside in — to protect that — is important,” Cortez said.
Beals, who works in prison reform and reentry advocacy through the Chicago Torture Justice Center and The Mud Theatre Project, said he also emphasizes the importance of ensuring representation for all and believes equal representation for those in prisons will create a more effective and ethical system.
“If you really want corrections to work, you want to hear those inside voices,” Beals said. “Right now, you don’t.”