A Connecticut coalition wants the State Legislature to stop counting prisoners as residents of the towns in which they are incarcerated. State Senator Eric Coleman (D-Bloomfield), co-chair of the legislature’s judiciary committee, was joined by civil rights and legal activists at the state Capitol in Hartford on Wednesday to call for legislation that would stop the practice of what they call prison gerrymandering.
Counting inmates as part of the local population is not new. According to a report by the Prison Policy Initiative it’s been done for more than 200 years. What has changed is the location of the prisons, and the number of people incarcerated. Most prisons used to incarcerate people near where they lived, but in the 1980’s and 90’s, the prison population boomed and states began building prisons in rural areas.
Peter Wagner, Executive Director of the Prison Policy Initiative, said this practice allows communities that host prisons to pad their population numbers and gain extra representation in the legislature.
"Unfortunately, the State of Connecticut relies on flawed data that counts incarcerated people in the wrong location," he said. "This flaw distorts the legislative districts that are drawn based on that data, and it changes how the decisions that are made in this building are made and their outcomes."
Ingrid Alvarez, Connecticut State Director of the Hispanic Federation, said this form of gerrymandering reduces the number of representatives in the legislature for the state's communities of color.
"Prison gerrymandering unfairly distorts communities of colors' representation in state and local politics," she said. "Specifically, it directly and negatively impacts the votes of Latinos and African-Americans in our state by diluting the power of our vote."
The coalition wants the legislature to pass a law that would count prisoners in the towns in which they last lived before going to prison.
Four states, including New York, have passed similar legislation.
