A few weeks ago, as the final gavel fell, marking the end of Montana’s legislative session, something remarkable and rare happened. We found bipartisan common ground on one of the most notoriously contentious issues: redistricting.
Lawmakers of both parties agreed: A community shouldn’t get a louder voice in state government just because it contains a prison.
Montana is among the growing list of places that recognize the Census Bureau gets it wrong when it counts incarcerated people in prison cells rather than their home communities. When states use this flawed data to draw new legislative districts during redistricting, it paints a distorted picture of the state, with communities that contain prisons boasting artificially inflated populations and getting more political clout as a result — a problem known as prison gerrymandering.
The choice to reject the way the Census Bureau counts incarcerated people is obvious to anyone who looks at the facts. People in prison are not members of the community where the facility is located. They don’t attend community functions, pay taxes, vote or build social contacts outside of the prison walls. And when they’re released, they will almost certainly return to where they call home.
Prison gerrymandering is about more than just lines on a map. It has real-world implications. For example, Native Americans account for just over 6 percent of Montana’s population but roughly 24 percent of its state prison population. By counting them at the prison instead of at their homes before incarceration — often on our state’s seven tribal reservations — the Census Bureau dilutes Native representation in the legislature. A similar dynamic plays out across economic lines as well, with many of our state’s poorest neighborhoods boasting some of the highest incarceration rates.
This power shift has dramatic policy impacts. A community with a high incarceration rate is more likely to support policies that address mass incarceration’s root causes — poverty, substance use and untreated mental health issues. But prison gerrymandering dilutes the voices of these communities, weakening their influence on lawmakers. Ending prison gerrymandering will ensure these communities have an equal voice in policymaking.
While some folks had concerns this change could cost prison towns money, the truth is this change doesn’t impact how federal funds are allocated in any meaningful way. That’s because, while federal programs rely on Census data to help determine where money is spent, it is one of many considerations. Most programs rely more heavily on other indicators of need, such as poverty rates, to determine where money is spent. Counting incarcerated people in the right place will have no bearing on these.
Montanans agreed that ending prison gerrymandering was the right thing to do, but implementing the policy was no small feat. Working on a small budget and tight timeframe, our state’s independent redistricting commission had to spend both time and money to hire outside experts to correct the flawed Census data to count incarcerated people at their true homes.
Despite this, the bipartisan commission got it done. Our legislature — controlled by a Republican supermajority — overwhelmingly voted with Democrats to make this change permanent, and our Republican governor signed it into law.
More than 200 local governments and 14 states have taken similar action to end prison gerrymandering. This includes sparsely populated, conservative states like Montana and large, liberal states like New York, as well as diverse urban cities like Philadelphia and rural prison counties like Alfalfa, Okla. So many places are tackling this problem that the fiercely bipartisan National Conference of State Legislatures recently called the movement to end prison gerrymandering the “fastest-growing trend in redistricting.”
All of this raises the obvious question: With so many places clamoring for this change and more likely to join their ranks by 2030, why does the Census Bureau still force state and local governments to jump through hoops and spend money to fix a problem it created?
As its rationale for counting incarcerated people in the wrong place, the bureau cites its “usual residence rule,” which says they count people where they eat and sleep on most days. This sounds reasonable until you realize the bureau treats incarcerated people differently than others in similar situations. For example, it counts students at boarding schools at their home addresses, but children in juvenile correctional facilities are counted where they are detained, even though two-thirds of them will be there for less than six months.
Every 10 years, the Census Bureau makes slight tweaks to its processes to ensure its count reflects the true nature of the country. As it begins to plan for 2030, ending prison gerrymandering should be near the top of its list of changes. Taking this step will not only respond to the clear, bipartisan consensus growing on this issue but also take an important step to ensure that all communities have an equal voice in government.
Sen. Shane Morigeau, a Democrat, and Sen. Jason Small, a Republican, are both members of the Montana State Senate. Sen. Morigeau sponsored the measure to permanently end prison gerrymandering in the state.