How many states have ended prison gerrymandering? About a dozen!

We tally up the progress made across the country.

by Andrea Fenster

Prison gerrymandering is a practice that distorts political representation by counting people who are incarcerated as residents where the are locked up, rather than in the place they truly call home, for the purpose of drawing government district lines. The practice, which was created by the way the Census Bureau counts incarcerated people, gives residents who live close to prisons more political clout than those who live in districts without prisons.

Since we started our efforts against prison gerrymandering two decades ago, about a dozen states have ended the practice. However, the precise number depends on the details. Prison gerrymandering can occur at different levels of government, be solved by different bodies of government, and be eliminated or mitigated through different methods, which can make it somewhat confusing to measure where prison gerrymandering has ended.

In a new blog post, we examine the progress being made to eliminate prison gerrymandering across the country.

No matter how you look at it, though, as of today, 47% of the country lives in a state that has formally rejected prison gerrymandering, adding to the growing body of evidence that it is time for the Census Bureau to count people at home.

Below we highlight two states where small actions by state and local officials can help build on the progress we've made.

One important action can help end local prison gerrymandering in Wisconsin

A confusing and outdated attorney general opinion has forced Wisconsin local governments into prison gerrymandering, but there is still time to fix this before districts are drawn for the next decade.

by Mike Wessler

Small, rural cities and counties are particularly susceptible to the impacts of prison gerrymandering. Low populations and a prison building boom have combined to distort local governance and representation in unanticipated ways.

Few places exemplify this problem as vividly as Wisconsin, where areas like Juneau County have been hindered in their efforts to address prison gerrymandering by a confusing and outdated attorney general opinion from 1981. The opinion requires local governments to take part in prison gerrymandering, even when they don't want to.

The good news is the state's current attorney general, Josh Kaul, can issue a new opinion that updates the outmoded legal reasoning from 1981 and makes it clear that local governments can address prison gerrymandering.

Learn more about how a new attorney general opinion can free Wisconsin local governments to address prison gerrymandering.

For the first time ever, Tennessee counties can avoid prison gerrymandering

A change to state law frees counties to draw districts that truly represent the residents of their communities.

by Mike Wessler

For county governments, the practice of redrawing district lines every ten years is usually a fairly routine process. You get the new data, examine it, and make minor tweaks to districts based on where your population grew and where it shrank. This year, though, thanks to a change in state law, counties in Tennessee have, for the first time, an opportunity to make their districts fairer and more representative by ending prison gerrymandering.

Tennessee was one of just a handful of states that previously explicitly prohibited counties from cutting the prisons out of their local data when they redistrict. This prohibition, combined with a prison-building boom in rural areas, resulted in huge distortions created by prison gerrymandering.

The 2016 change to state law frees Tennessee counties to finally tackle this problem, but they have to act quickly. Learn more about how Tennessee counties can avoid prison gerrymandering when redistricting this year.