Count prisoners when redrawing districtng maps

Count prisoners when redrawing districtng maps

Published: Sunday, March 13, 2011, 5:43 AM

By Alexander Shalom

As New Jersey’s legislative redistricting commission meets, it will have to confront this question: How should we count the roughly 22,000 people serving sentences in New Jersey’s state prisons? For years, New Jersey has counted inmates as residents of the municipalities where prisons are located, rather than at their home addresses.

The goal in redistricting is to draw districts that ensure equal democratic representation for all New Jersey residents. U.S. Census findings guide the redistricting committee in determining how to draw district lines through the state’s neighborhoods, towns and counties. However, the process is politically fraught; when lines are shifted, so too is power.

Power is certainly at issue when it comes to prison-based gerrymandering. Areas with large prison populations are eligible for greater representation, benefiting from the presence of prisoners who are not eligible to vote. Meanwhile, the voting power of prisoners’ home districts is diluted because they are not being counted there. This inequity is magnified in districts with the highest incarceration rates.

Cumberland County is home to three large prisons, which account for almost 5 percent of the total county population. This means the voting power of residents living in Cumberland County is artificially inflated — by a significant amount — as a result of the prisoners being counted there. Essex County also houses a prison, but the number of residents from that county who wind up in prison is far greater than the number of prisoners it receives. As a result, the voting power in that county is artificially deflated.

No system of counting disenfranchised prisoners will eliminate the disparity altogether, but counting prisoners in their home district will mitigate it.

Although using prisoners’ last address before incarceration is not a perfect proxy for their home, as a general rule, the place where people live when arrested is the best indicator of where they will call home once they are released.

In addition, there is no question that the interests of a prisoner would be better represented by their loved ones than by residents of the district in which they are detained.

In order to avoid artificially inflating voting power in certain districts, New Jersey must count prisoners as residents of their home district, not their prison district.

This can be accomplished through legislation, or the redistricting commission may act on its own — and it should.

New Jersey would not be the first state to end prison-based gerrymandering. New York, Delaware and Maryland passed laws last year requiring the states to count prisoners in their home districts for the purposes of apportionment and redistricting.

The best way to promote a true participatory democracy is to allow prisoners and people serving sentences on parole or probation to vote. But until that democratic ideal is realized, New Jersey should count prisoners in their home districts as a way to protect the decades-old U.S. Supreme Court instruction on apportionment: one person, one vote.

Alexander Shalom is policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey.