This act mandates that incarcerated individuals be counted at their last known residence before incarceration for both census purposes and congressional redistricting.
Deborah Ross
Representative
NC-2
The End Prison Gerrymandering Act changes how incarcerated individuals are counted in the U.S. Census, requiring them to be counted at their last known home address before incarceration, starting with the 2030 census. This change mandates that states must use this pre-incarceration residence when drawing congressional districts. The goal is to prevent prison populations from artificially inflating the political power of districts where prisons are located.
End Prison Gerrymandering Act Reassigns Incarcerated Population Counts to Home Addresses for 2030 Redistricting
The End Prison Gerrymandering Act fundamentally changes how the U.S. Census Bureau and state governments calculate political representation. Starting with the 2030 Census, the Secretary of Commerce is required under Section 2 to count incarcerated individuals at their 'last usual place of residence' prior to their incarceration, rather than at the correctional facility where they are held. This change applies to everyone in federal, state, and local facilities, including youth detention centers. By shifting these numbers back to home communities, the bill aims to ensure that the data used for drawing congressional districts reflects where people actually live and belong.
Mapping Real Communities
Under current rules, a large prison in a rural town can artificially inflate that town’s population, giving it more political weight in Congress even though the people in the prison cannot vote and have no ties to the local community. For example, if a person from a city is serving time in a facility three hours away, this bill ensures they are counted as a resident of their home city. Section 22 of the Act of June 18, 1929, is amended to mandate that states use these adjusted home-address counts when drawing congressional district lines. This prevents 'prison gerrymandering,' where the presence of a prison effectively shifts political power away from urban or high-incarceration neighborhoods toward the districts where prisons are built.
Impact on Representation and Resources
For the average person, this bill is about the fairness of your vote and the distribution of resources. If you live in a neighborhood that has seen many residents move into the justice system, your community has historically 'lost' those people in the census, which can lead to less federal funding and weaker political representation. By returning those counts to the home district, the bill ensures that representation follows the person, not the cell. While this requires a new level of data coordination between correctional facilities and the Census Bureau to track pre-incarceration addresses, the goal is a more accurate map of where Americans truly reside. This shift ensures that legislative districts are balanced by actual community members, making the 'one person, one vote' principle a bit more literal.