That's because the Census Bureau counts prisoners as residents of the towns they are incarcerated in, instead of the neighborhoods they lived in before being locked up. The result: Every calculation that uses Census data--from federal funding formulas to drawing state legislative districts--gives more money and representation to communities with prisons than they would get if reckoning were based solely on their non-incarcerated populations. That makes prisoners a hot commodity that everyone wants to claim.
City Limits Magazine
That disparity in political power has researchers and advocates, both in New York and nationally, taking a closer look at the system--and pushing to change it. One option is to convince the Census Bureau to count differently; another is to allow state legislatures to conduct counts themselves, instead of relying on the Census. Proponents of these changes say the current situation has economic and political ramifications. They note that the current method bolsters Republican domination of the State Senate, helping to perpetuate drug sentencing laws that discriminate racially. Furthermore, proponents note, the current counting system siphons resources from downstate, so ex-cons returning to impoverished city neighborhoods get fewer services to help them reintegrate into the community.
Commentators like Harvard Law School professor Lani Guinier have remarked on the injustice of the arrangement. "The strategic placement of prisons in predominantly white rural districts often means that these districts gain more political representation based on the disenfranchised people in the prison," she wrote in The American Prospect in 2001, "while the inner-city communities they come from suffer a proportionate loss of political power and representation." The situation, according to Guinier, is comparable to the three-fifths rule that allowed states to count slaves to bolster the South's representation in Congress--which helped the South preserve slavery.
While many agree the injustice exists, it's harder to pin down the best solution. Advocates admit that repatriating money and power to urban areas might not have an immediate, significant impact. Nationally, each prisoner brings in only about $100 in local and federal aid--and figures for New York state might be lower, according to rough estimates by Eric Lotke, a Soros Justice Senior Fellow. Currently, 43,740 people from New York City are incarcerated elsewhere, and Lotke's research suggests that these prisoners export, at most, $4.37 million annually from the city--peanuts compared to budget gaps in the billions. Further, prisoners from New York City collectively represent only about one-seventh of a New York City state Senate seat. That's not enough to tip the 38-to-24 Republican advantage in Albany, or to compel significant change in the Assembly, where Democrats already outnumber Republicans.
