The number of states that reallocate (reassign) prisoners/inmates for redistricting has grown from just 2 during the 2010 redistricting cycle to 13 states in this 2020 cycle. They are California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, and Washington. The goal of this process is to remove or mitigate distortions in district populations that are caused by correctional facilities that house large numbers of ineligible voters. This entails adjusting census data (which counts inmates where they are physically located) to reflect each inmate’s location to be their last known address.
The inmate reallocation process is not a straightforward one and is data intensive. While reallocation policies in states are relatively new, the U.S. Supreme Court has already approved of the practice in principle.
Last week the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) released this report detailing a survey of those states that reallocated inmates during the 2020 cycle. The report identifies the common processes and challenges that states experienced – mostly through the eyes of the staffers that were on the front lines of this process.
The report includes several recommendations for the next cycle based on the experiences of these 13 states. They include:
- Obtaining more assistance from the U.S. Census Bureau to facilitate inmate reallocation;
- Working with the federal government to obtain data on federal inmates;
- Developing policies that improve state correctional facility data;
- Developing state policy for handling homeless or transient inmates;
- Establishing uniform race categories (most likely the U.S. Census Bureau categories) for inmate recordkeeping;
- Developing state policy guidance on how to handle common data issues such as geocoding irregularities and inmates from out-of-state; and
- Working with the U.S. Census Bureau to ensure accurate data files and that differential privacy efforts do not interfere with the prison data needed to perform reallocation.
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