According to an analysis of census data from the Prison Policy Initiative, several mostly rural legislative districts in Arizona that were drawn after the 2000 census included thousands of non-voting prisoners. Six districts had about 2 percent or more of their population behind bars in state, federal or private prisons. One district in Pinal County had 8 percent of its population in prison – a percentage that is double the amount that triggered major reforms in New York. Congressional districts were impacted, too, with the rural district that includes Pinal County made up of more than 3 percent incarcerated, non-voting felons.
A PHOENIX magazine analysis of population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau as well as records of public and private prison expansion during the past decade shows that the impact could be far more significant and affect more districts when political boundaries are redrawn this year. The process could shift political power further in favor of rural towns and counties at the expense of neighborhoods in the Phoenix-metropolitan area.
Crime is urban. Prisons are rural. It is one of the great economic exchanges and population shifts of the modern age, and it is one of the reasons why some experts are sounding the alarm about the effect prisons have on the redistricting process.
Most prisoners nationwide come from urban areas but end up being housed in prisons in rural areas and small towns, beefing up the populations of those areas. In Arizona, more than 65 percent of the 40,000 inmates in state prisons come from Maricopa County, but only 23 percent of state prisoners are housed in prisons within the county. Plus, most of the private prisons are in rural areas, too. This means that counting prisoners in the rural areas “dilutes Maricopa County’s representation, because you have people who are Maricopa County residents under one definition being counted as residents of whatever county they are imprisoned in,” Steen says.
It also impacts the distribution of political power within the county. The largest prisons in Maricopa County, Lewis and Perryville, are on the outskirts beyond Buckeye and Goodyear – in different political districts and far from the urban areas that most of the inmates called home.
The Arizona State Constitution includes a clause that says, “For the purpose of voting, no person shall be deemed to have gained or lost a residence… while confined in any public jail or prison.” This appears to dictate that prisoners be counted at home – not at the location of the prisons. Wagner, Bender and two other constitutional law experts consulted for this story say this means the courts could declare redistricting maps that count prisoners in the prison districts unconstitutional.
In practical terms, since inmates cannot vote, being counted in the prison districts instead of their home districts has no direct impact on them. But it does impact their families, friends and neighborhoods: If the prisoners were counted in the areas where they lived before they were arrested and are likely to return after release, as the Constitutional clause appears to direct, those parts of the state could potentially qualify for additional political representation. “There is little question that it is a transfer – a largely arbitrary transfer – of political power,” says Gabriel Jack Chin, a University of Arizona law professor who focuses on criminal justice issues, immigration and voting rights.
The impact of this transfer of power is even more insidious when demographics are taken into account: It usually comes at the expense of poor, minority areas in favor of rural, white areas around prisons. Plus, it can skew the demographic profile of the prison districts, making them appear to have more minority residents than actually live in those communities. In a redistricting guide released in the fall, civil rights groups including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Legal Defense and Education Fund and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) blasted so-called “prison-based gerrymandering,” which they say has “tremendous implications” on how Latinos and African-American communities are impacted in the redistricting process.
In Arizona, Latinos, African-Americans and American Indians are incarcerated at rates disproportionately higher than their percent of the state’s population. About 42 percent of state prisoners are Hispanic, compared to only about 31 percent of the state population, according to prison statistics and 2009 population estimates. (Both figures include citizens and illegal immigrants.) African-Americans are even more likely to be incarcerated. The state’s population is only about 4 percent African-American, but the prison population is 13 percent African-American.
They are also more likely to hail from urban areas. Complete data on the home addresses of Arizona’s state prisoners is not available to determine which areas of the state lost population because of the way prisoners were counted in the redistricting process. However, a 2005 study of prison admissions found that most of the ZIP codes with the highest rates of prison admissions were in Phoenix, with the highest number of admissions in ZIP codes in south and west Phoenix – areas that are heavily Latino and African-American, and where voters tend to vote Democratic.
On the other hand, the rural areas surrounding most prisons are predominantly white and more conservative. James Gardner, who teaches election law at the State University of New York in Buffalo, says the practice of counting inmates in the prison communities may undermine the Voting Rights Act protections for minorities. “It is true that the benefit of enhanced voice and control that is now enjoyed by a rural white district would be enjoyed by a majority-minority district, in an urban district” if prisoners were counted at their home addresses, Gardner notes.
The way prisoners are counted could also impact public policy decisions in the state by amplifying prison interests. Chin notes that people in communities around prisons are more likely to have ties to prisons through employment than incarceration. (Correctional Corporation of America, which operates six private prison facilities in Arizona, is now the largest employer in Pinal County.)
Communities around prisons have an economic interest in prison expansion and, therefore, may be more likely to support policies that increase the number of prisoners or lead to the construction of more private prisons. Communities with high incarceration rates, however, may be more likely to support criminal justice reforms, such as changes to drug laws or community-based crime prevention programs. “You take the votes away from the places where people pay the price for these criminal justice policies, and we transfer the power to people where they get rewarded for extensive mass incarceration,” Chin explains.
The potential influence of the private-prison industry on public policy in Arizona got nationwide attention this fall when a National Public Radio investigation alleged that two private prison firms were instrumental in drafting and pushing state Senate Bill 1070, a controversial immigration-reform measure. The measure, which could increase profits for private prison firms by leading to more immigrant detainees, was sponsored by many lawmakers who represent prison districts or received campaign donations from private-prison executives. Ironically, many of the inmates counted in the prison districts are Latinos who are more likely to oppose measures like SB 1070 that disproportionately impact their communities.
Rios, who represented the prison-heavy Pinal County district in the Legislature for many years, acknowledges that the prison industry has helped his county and that officials in prison districts are apt to support industry interests. “If you’re a legislator representing that type of a district where you see these entities are creating jobs, yeah, you are going to fight for them, you are going to want them in your district,” he says. The issue of prisons in redistricting wasn’t raised when he was involved in the process in the 1990s in the Legislature, Rios says. But he says he believes it is important to count prisoners and that it could be difficult to count them anywhere other than the prisons. “They should be counted someway or somehow – whether you reassign them back to the city or town they are from when they are sent, which would take a lot of work, or count them in the prison they are located. You should count them,” he says.
It is hard to generalize or quantify if there is any actual impact on public policy decisions in Arizona or other states based on how prisoners are counted when political districts are drawn. “It undermines equal representation, but I am not sure if it undermines it significantly,” Steen says, about the makeup of current districts.