NAACP sues Connecticut over ‘prison gerrymandering’

By Associated Press in New Haven, Connecticut, The Guardian

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) sued the state of Connecticut on Thursday, over how it counts its prisoners when crafting legislative districts. The NAACP lawsuit argues that urban districts are weakened while rural districts with fewer minorities benefit unfairly, in a practice critics call “partisan gerrymandering”.

The civil rights organization hopes the case can become a template for suits it may file in other states where inmates are included in the population counts of areas where they are imprisoned, rather than their home districts.

The NAACP says including inmates in population counts where prisons are located is unfair to those living in prisoners’ home districts. (Photograph: Jonny Weeks for the Guardian)

Including incarcerated people in population counts for the Connecticut general assembly districts where prisons are located is unfair to those living in the districts where the inmates originally came from, said Derrick Johnson, NAACP president and chief executive.

“It gives disproportionate weight to oftentimes rural parts of the states, justifying disproportion in terms of representation and the allocation of state and federal funds,” Johnson said. “If you consider where individuals are from, you allow for a more accurate representation and allocation of public funds.”

The suit, filed in federal court and announced at a news conference in New Haven, is part of a larger effort by the NAACP to fight practices the civil rights organization argues are attempts to suppress minority voting. Those efforts include putting limits on same-day voter registration and failing to allow early voting, said Bradford Berry, NAACP legal counsel.

Prison gerrymandering can affect power in state legislatures across the country. Urban legislative districts, with larger minority populations, lose out because there is essentially an undercount in their communities, Berry said.

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Read more about prison-based gerrymandering in Wisconsin and other states here.