Reform Group Urges West Virginia to End Prison Gerrymandering Before 2030 Census

Reform Group Urges West Virginia to End Prison Gerrymandering Before 2030 Census

By EditorJun 23, 2025
The reform group Prison Policy Initiative (PPI) has reignited calls for West Virginia to address prison gerrymandering, a redistricting practice that counts incarcerated people as residents of prison locations rather than their home communities. This approach, used during the last redistricting cycle, disproportionately skews representation in districts that house correctional facilities. According to the PPI, some legislative districts in the state have prison populations making up as much as 18% of their total count, meaning those districts have significantly fewer actual residents with voting power compared to others. Reform advocates argue that this violates the foundational democratic principle of equal…
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Read: NCSL Report and Recommendations on State Inmate Reallocation Efforts During the 2020 Redistricting Cycle.

Read: NCSL Report and Recommendations on State Inmate Reallocation Efforts During the 2020 Redistricting Cycle.

By EditorApr 17, 2023
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…
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VA Supreme Court Rejects Challenge to Prisoner Reallocation Law

By EditorSep 23, 2021
The Virginia Supreme Court has rejected a legal challenge to a state law that changes how prison inmates are counted for purposes of redistricting. The petition for a writ of mandamus from the court had alleged that the Virginia legislature acted outside of the "prescribed constitutional amendment process" when it enacted statutory criteria regarding the reallocation of prisoners. It argued that while the commission along with other redistricting criteria was created through referendum and constitutional amendments, the prisoner reallocation statute was not and thus violates the state constitution. The petition had asked the state supreme court to prohibit the commission…
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Time.com Article Lays Out the Case for Prison Gerrymandering Reform

Time.com Article Lays Out the Case for Prison Gerrymandering Reform

By EditorJul 05, 2021
Prison Gerrymandering is more an act of omission than commission in that it occurs as a result of the redistricting process unless a jurisdiction acts to reverse it. In the 10 years between the 2010 and 2020 redistricting cycle, nearly a dozen states have committed to rectifying what many advocates say is a distortion in representational rights as a result of counting prisoners as residents of the electoral districts they are incarcerated in as opposed to the districts they resided in prior. Time.com offers this recent article that describes the issue in practical terms and makes the case for nationwide…
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Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont signs bill ending prison gerrymandering

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont signs bill ending prison gerrymandering

By EditorMay 29, 2021
Press release from the Prison Policy Initiative.   Connecticut becomes the 11th state to end the practice of prison gerrymandering. May 27, 2021 For Immediate Release – Yesterday, Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont signed a bill ensuring that people in state prisons will hereafter be counted as residents of their home addresses when new legislative districts are drawn. The new law makes Connecticut the eleventh state to end the practice known as prison gerrymandering, after Illinois passed its own bill earlier this year. The national movement against prison gerrymandering began in 2001 when the founders of the Prison Policy Initiative discovered that the sheer size of…
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NCSL Overview: Reallocating Incarcerated Persons for Redistricting

NCSL Overview: Reallocating Incarcerated Persons for Redistricting

By EditorMar 17, 2021
In this recent article, the National Conference of State Legislatures gives an overview of the fairly recent practice of prisoner reallocation in redistricting. This process refers to counting prisoners at their home address for redistricting purposes instead of the prison's address - which is what the census does. Prisoner reallocation involves obtaining records from prison officials and careful adjustment of official census data files. This overview explains the practice and how it relates to representation. Since this article was first published, Illinois became the tenth state to mandate prisoner reallocation beginning in 2030. Feb. 18, 2021: States redistrict their legislative…
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Illinois Becomes the 10th State to Count Prisoners at Home for Redistricting

Illinois Becomes the 10th State to Count Prisoners at Home for Redistricting

By EditorFeb 25, 2021
Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker signed into law on Tuesday a measure that would require state prisoners to be counted at their home address for redistricting beginning in 2030. Illinois joins nine other states with similar provisions, they are California, Colorado, Delaware, Maryland, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Virginia, and Washington State. The process of counting prisoners at home versus the prison is "prisoner reallocation." Read the Prison Policy Initatives' press release below. For immediate release — On Tuesday, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker signed an omnibus criminal justice package that (among several victories) makes Illinois the tenth state to end prison…
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The Census Bureau Warms Up to Prison Gerrymandering

The Census Bureau Warms Up to Prison Gerrymandering

By EditorMar 16, 2015
The Census Bureau boasted in its 2010 View from the States,” that it has listened to state requests and is working toward helping states facilitate the latest redistricting trend: prisoner reallocation. The Bureau announced that it would conduct a feasibility study regarding prisoner reallocation - counting prisoners at their last residential address, although a previous study nearly ten years go found it to be cost prohibitive. Currently, the two states that have already endeavored to reallocate prisoners have used the Bureau’s Group Quarters file, which was released early during the 2010 census cycle for that purpose. The group quarters data…
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