Deadline Detroit | Prisons give rural areas disproportionate influence in redistribution, critics say

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If a Detroit resident is incarcerated in an Upper Peninsula jail, where should their residence be recorded for population – and redistribution purposes? Here, or hundreds of kilometers to the north? Even if they can’t vote?

Are the Detroiters on the other side of that fence really Yoopers? (File photo)

The current system would have Michigan’s 35,000 prisoners in their cells anywhere. Critics say this is wrong.

Michigan Bridge Reports:

Opponents call it “gerrymandering in prison” because it swells the population – and power – of small communities. Activists want inmates to follow Pennsylvania’s lead and count inmates as residents of their homes, which are more likely to be in urban areas like Detroit.

“The districts where they are incarcerated have more representation – white rural districts, while urban districts which have more people of color tend to lose representation and tend to have less say in their government,” he said. said Mike Wessler, communications director for the Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit criminal justice organization opposed to mass incarceration.

Any change would require legislative approval, however, and neither the legislature nor the Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission has taken up the cause.

Detroit Democratic Senator Sylvia Santana introduced a bill requiring the Michigan Department of Corrections to report inmate pre-custody addresses for redistribution, but it never had a hearing at the State Senate dominated by the GOP. Santana said it’s because Republicans don’t want to cede the power that comes from keeping bodies in Republican areas.

However, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey said the commission is limited to using only US census data in its deliberations and that prisoners are counted in areas where they are held.

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