CORRUPT PRISON-BASED GERRYMANDERING ENDS IN NEW YORK STATE

This month legislation was signed into law by Governor Paterson that
would bar legislative districts from counting imprisoned individuals
in state prisons as part of their population. New York became the
second state, following Maryland, to end the practice.

For years New York activists called for the dismantling of
prison-based gerrymandering (PBG) that allowed mostly rural counties
to inflate their population numbers. This resulted in financial
rewards for those communities that utilized it. Brent Staples of the
NY Times colorfully described PBG when he once said, "There are many
ways to hijack political power. One of them is to draw state or city
legislative districts around large prisons -- and pretend that the
inmates are legitimate constituents." The new change could
dramatically change the state's political dynamics.

PBG was an unfair practice that increased the populations of rural
upstate districts with prisoners who were mostly from urban areas.
According to Peter Wagner of the Prison Policy Initiative, an
organization that pioneered the challenge of PBG, when legislative
districts are now redrawn in 2011, 26,000 prisoners will be counted as
part of their home communities in the five boroughs of NYC, instead of
the prisons they are housed in.

Although the state practiced PBG for many years, nothing could be done
because of the powerful politics associated with incarceration --
fueled by the war on drugs. If you connected the dots you would see
that PBG was tied into the prison industrial complex, money raised
from the local, state and federal levels. Since 1982, 33 prisons were
built in rural upstate communities, giving politicians the incentive
to turn these prisons into cash cows for their respective
communities.

But the tight grip of the instilled corrupt political process of PBG
was recently broken when a powerful coalition was created headed by
Senator Eric T. Schneiderman. He became lead sponsor of the bill that
challenged PBG and eventually became law. Schneiderman -- who is
currently running for New York Attorney General (
http://www.ericschneiderman.com/home )
- -- has said that "Equal representation under the law benefits
everyone. The practice of counting people where they are incarcerated
undermines the fundamental principle of 'one person, one vote' -- it's
undemocratic and reflects a broken system. This legislation is as
simple as it is fair: it requires that legislative districts at every
level of government contain an equal numbers of residents."

According to research done by the Prison Policy Initiative in 2002
seven New York State Senate districts depend on prison-based
gerrymandering to maintain their existence. One of the districts that
will be affected is Republican Senator Betty Little's 46th District.
Little was a very vocal opponent of prison-gerrymandering reform
legislation. It is not surprising -- without her prison constituency
(about 13,000 individuals in 12 prisons), her district would be
unconstitutional. She knew that if reform happened, districts would
merge and politicians like her would likely lose their jobs.

Maybe this was the reason why Senator Dale Volker (R. 59th District)
recently announced his retirement after 35 years. He was one of the
politicians who would be affected by the changes in the prison-based
gerrymandering laws. For many years Volker was one of the toughest
opponents of Rockefeller Drug Law reform. He swore up and down if the
Rock laws were ever reformed the flood gates of hell would open. I
challenged him about the influence of the many prisons in his district
about 13 years ago on CNBC's Charles Grodin Show (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOlg8tNNTS8 )
. Volker became enraged when I told him the reason he supported the
Rockefeller Drug Laws was because the non-violent prisoners housed in
those prisons fed his community and allowed him to stay in power.

Hopefully the axing of prison-gerrymandering will result in the
reduction of the reliance on the prison industrial complex in upstate
New York. We need to re-think our system of justice, where prisoners
become a significant commodity for politicians to use as tools to
manipulate and control the political process. When we do so we will be
able to put our destiny in our own hands once again.