The “prison gerrymandering” lawsuit

Of the many lawsuits filed so far over Texas redistricting, this is the one I know the least about.

Nearly a quarter of a million people were incarcerated in Texas when the Census was taken last year. When lawmakers redrew the state’s voting maps this fall, these inmates were counted in the prison towns where they were locked up, rather than where they lived beforehand.

A Dallas Morning News analysis of Census and prison data found this practice, which opponents call “prison gerrymandering,” inflates the political power of Republican districts while draining clout from Democratic strongholds. It also makes more conservative, rural areas of the state look larger and more diverse than they truly are.

Republicans say the maps are legal and fair. They argue there isn’t a viable alternative for counting prisoners, and changing that won’t shift the balance of power in Texas to Democrats.

But The News found the state’s new legislative maps would look significantly different if Texas stopped this practice. Reallocating prisoners to the place where they were charged would cause nearly one in five counties — most of which went for Donald Trump last year — to lose population to more urban, liberal areas. Not counting prisoners at all would throw more than two dozen House districts out of population boundaries, making them subject to court challenge.

Experts say The News’ findings raise questions about diluting the minority vote, fair representation and the principle of “one person, one vote.” Incarcerated people in effect become ghost constituents, they said, unwittingly boosting the power of prison towns, and helping Republicans stay in power, while largely lacking the right to vote.

[…]

Including jails, federal and state prisons and detention centers, Texas incarcerated more people than any other state, last year’s Census data show.

Counting these people at their place of confinement helped Republicans, The News analysis found. It’s impossible to know how these incarcerated people would vote. But while many inmates in state prisons were charged in urban areas, and most are not white, the vast majority were drawn into GOP districts.

According to The News’ analysis, Republicans in the state Legislature will represent two-thirds of incarcerated people under the newly redrawn maps. The number is even higher for the U.S. Congress: 76% of people incarcerated at Census time were drawn into districts represented by a Republican in Washington.

Two state lawmakers saw their district numbers inflated most by the count of incarcerated people: Rep. Kyle Kacal of College Station and Cody Harris of Palestine, both Republicans. One in 10 people in Kacal’s district, where death row and the prisons department headquarters is located, is behind bars.

In Harris’ district, which includes Tennessee Colony in Anderson County and all or part of three other counties in East Texas, nearly 8% are incarcerated.

The News analyzed how the state’s new electoral maps would be affected if incarcerated people were counted differently. We used data on more than 140,000 inmates incarcerated in state-run jails and prisons when the Census was taken. This analysis does not include the effect of moving federal inmates or those housed in local jails or ICE detention centers.

Of the 232 counties that went for Donald Trump in the 2020 election, 46 would shrink in population if incarcerated people were counted in the county where they were charged. This is the best measure The News could use for previous residence, since state and federal prison agencies declined to release comprehensive data on inmates’ previous home addresses.

The 46 counties would lose more than 104,000 people, The News’ analysis shows. When added together, pro-Trump counties would lose nearly 52,000 people. Nearly all of them — 49,667 people — would be reallocated back to one of the state’s five largest counties, which all went for President Joe Biden last year, with more than 11,000 going to Dallas County.

The News analysis also found counting incarcerated people at their prison address hurts GOP counties without lockups. McLennan, Smith and Montgomery Counties, all of which went for Trump in 2020, would gain more than 2,500 people each if incarcerated people were moved back to the county where they were charged.

If prisoners were excluded from population counts altogether, The News found that 29 state House districts might need to be redrawn. This is because every Texas legislative district is meant to represent roughly the same amount of people, and there should be no more than a 10% difference in population between the smallest and largest districts.

Those that don’t meet this requirement could be challenged in court; they are about equally split between Democrats and Republicans.

[…]

Experts acknowledge that Texas won’t suddenly turn blue if “prison gerrymandering” is banned.

In a state of 29 million, incarcerated people account for less than 1% of the population. Plus, as the party in power, Republicans could simply tweak district boundary lines to make up for a few thousand prisoners here or there.

But critics note it’s one of several tools the GOP uses to maintain power in a rapidly changing state. While they are a fraction of the population, there are more incarcerated people than needed for an entire House district and nearly one-third of a congressional district.

“The dynamics just described obviously favor white, rural Texas,” said Rep. Chris Turner of Grand Prairie, chairman of the Texas House Democratic Caucus. “[It] real questions of fairness.”

Rory Kramer, an associate professor at Villanova University who is completing a nationwide analysis of incarceration and redistricting, said The News’ findings did not surprise him.

“As your analysis demonstrates, this harms equal representation for people who live in neighborhoods with high incarceration rates,” Kramer said. “There’s no reason why living near a prison should mean some Texans have greater voices in the state legislature than other Texans.”

Mike Wessler, communications director for criminal justice advocacy group the Prison Policy Initiative, echoed Kramer’s concern: “It distorts political representation at all levels of government.”

This is related to the lawsuit that I mentioned here filed by inmate Damon James Wilson. This Courthouse News story is still the only writeup I have found about it. The key factor here in terms of drawing legislative districts, especially State House districts where the county line rule makes it harder for rural areas to dip into urban counties for help filling out district populations, is that there would just be fewer people in rural counties, and the net effect might be to force one or more fewer districts that are entirely or mostly within those counties. Add enough people back into Harris County and maybe you have to give it a 25th district again, as it had up to the 2011 reapportionment. West Texas lost a legislative district at that same time because the region didn’t have enough people to justify the higher number. Counting prison inmates in their home counties instead of where they are incarcerated might change the partisan balance by a district or two – it’s really hard to say, and the story doesn’t try – but in the end it’s more a matter of counting them where they consider their home to be, which by the way is the standard for residency and voter registration.

The other point, which I didn’t include in my excerpt, is that while inmates like Wilson are counted in the rural counties where they are locked up for the purposes of drawing legislative maps, they are not counted as residents of those counties when it comes to county-level redistricting.

Just as state lawmakers are in charge of legislative and congressional maps, local officials draw new county districts for positions like commissioners court, justices of the peace and constables after each Census. Many smaller, conservative counties with large inmate populations have long chosen to exclude incarcerated people when redrawing local maps because prisoners would skew their demographics.

Anderson County Judge Robert Johnston said counting the local 13,344 prisoners as constituents would inflate his actual population and result in one of his four commissioners representing only a handful of people outside the prison walls.

“[Prisoners are] not out roaming the streets, spending money in my county,” he said.

Mighty convenient, no? Just for the sake of consistency, there ought to be one standard. Perhaps as a result of this lawsuit there will be. Daily Kos has more.

Related Posts:

• More redistricting stuff
• First proposed Congressional map is out
• First new SBOE map proposed