More on the US Census and the politics of prisons in Wisconsin

Peter Wagner of the Prison Policy Institute responded to the posting “Effects of the US Census…” on our blog, noting that the “impact of the prison miscount of federal and state funding in Dodge County [discussed in previous post] is actually quite small”.

He suggests we have a look at the following articles to get a better sense of the political stakes in Wisconsin with regard to prisons, census data and the population geographies of electoral politics:

Importing Constituents: Prisoners and Political Clout in Wisconsin
A report from the PPI that “finds rural county and city government districts [in Wisconsin] that are as much as 79% prisoners. “This allows the real residents of a district with a prison to unfairly dominate their local government.”

Fuzzy Math: Is the Census Bureau creating unfair politics in Wisconsin?
Milwaukee Magazine article noting the effects on electoral politics in Wisconsin, a state where “the number of state prisoners grew from 4,000 in 1980 to over 20,000 in 2000. The growing number of miscounted citizens, the Prison Policy Institute says, causes “serious damage … to state and local democracy.”

New prisons mean new challenge for democracy in rural county 
An article about Chippewa County’s coming crisis from the prison miscount. Wagner writes: ”One of the new prisons in Chippewa County is large enough to create a bigger vote dilution problem than in any other county we’ve studied in Wisconsin. If the districts were redrawn today, the district that included the Stanley Correctional Institution would be 72% prisoners. Every group of 28 residents near the prison would be given as much as say over the future of the county as 100 residents in every other district. Giving a small group of people 3 times as much political power as other residents because they happen to have a prison nearby isn’t just unfair; it violates state and federal law.”