John Pfaff was interviewed by Chronicle about prison gerrymandering and the criminal justice system.
John Pfaff, a Fordham Law School professor who studies mass incarceration, spoke to the Chronicle recently about the phenomenon known as “prison gerrymandering” and how it impacts districting and representation. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, nearly 2 million people are counted as living somewhere other than their home district, effectively shifting political power to the districts that house prisons.
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Houston Chronicle: Primaries are upon us here in Texas – and one of the things you have written and tweeted about is prison gerrymandering. Can you tell me a little bit about what that is and why we should care?
John Pfaff: So, the Census has a challenge when it comes to prisoners. There’s two possibilities: They live inside the prison or in the last known address before prison. All but four states currently choose to count them in the prison. What makes that worse is outside of two of those 46 states they can’t vote. They count as living in that district and they can’t vote at all.
Given the nature of crime and punishment in the United States, what it’s effectively doing is moving black and brown people from urban areas and to more rural areas which tend to be more conservative, so it has a very clear partisan slant to it.