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NY Times Editorial: An End to Prison Gerrymandering

By Real Cost of Prisons Project (The Sentencing Project)

NY Times Editorial An End to Prison Gerrymandering Published: August 22, 2010 Gov. David Paterson of New York took a stand for electoral fairness earlier this month when he signed legislation that bans prison-based gerrymandering ? the cynical practice of counting prison inmates as ?residents,? to pad the size of legislative districts. The new law, which requires that prison inmates be counted at their homes, deserves to be emulated all across the country. Prison-based gerrymandering mattered little when inmate populations were small. But by the 1990s, when more than a million people nationally were behind bars, lawmakers had perfected the art of inflating the political clout of underpopulated areas by drawing legislative districts around prisons...continue to full post

Full post as published by The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog on August 23, 2010 (boomark / email).