Census Prisoner Count: Unconstitutional?

Have you mailed your completed Census form back yet? If you haven't, you need to get on it. The Census counts the population residing in particular areas and uses information gathered in the Census to draw legislative districts and determine how many Congressional representatives are assigned to a particular area.

So, then, what to do about prison populations?

Every prison I know of is located in a rural area, far away from high concentrations of black people. But the prisoners are counted in the Census and assigned to the area where they are incarcerated; not in the communities from which they came.

The 2010 Census will be counting more than 2 million incarcerated people in the wrong place. The laws of most states say that a prison cell is a not a residence, but the Census Bureau assigns incarcerated people to the prison location, not their home addresses. When state and local governments use this data to draw legislative districts, they unconstitutionally enhance the weight of a vote cast in districts that contain prisons and dilute those cast in every other district. Source: Prisoners of the Census

For the first time, the Census bureau is beginning to address the problem; although prisoners will still be counted the same way this year.

[The Census bureau is] Speeding up publication of its data on prison populations, so that states can use it in conjunction with their own data to assign incarcerated people to their home addresses, or assign prisoners to an unknown address so that they do not affect the redistricting formulas, or leave the prisoners counted where the prisons are. (In previous decades, this data was published too late to be useful.) Source

And states are changing their laws to demand that the Census count incarcerated people at home for redistricting purposes. Click on over to Prisoners of the Census to see exactly how your state is adversely affected by the Census practice of assigning counted prisoners to the place where they are incarcerated.

Big Hat tip to Bruce Dixon, of BlackAgendaReport.com, who called my attention to this story.