{"id":322,"date":"2018-12-20T12:20:11","date_gmt":"2018-12-20T17:20:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/?page_id=322"},"modified":"2025-05-12T11:14:26","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T15:14:26","slug":"where-does-a-prisoner-live-furthering-the-goals-of-representational-and-voter-equality-through-counting-prisoners","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/in-print\/volume-107\/volume-107-issue-1-oct-2018\/where-does-a-prisoner-live-furthering-the-goals-of-representational-and-voter-equality-through-counting-prisoners\/","title":{"rendered":"Where Does a Prisoner Live?: Furthering the Goals of Representational and Voter Equality Through Counting Prisoners"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p2\">Until the past few decades, the question of where to count prisoners<sup>1<\/sup><span class=\"s2\">\u00a0<\/span>for purposes of districting was a relatively benign inquiry, if it came up at all. However, an explosion of mass incarceration beginning in the 1980s has resulted in the imprisonment of a huge percentage of the United States population: in 1978, approximately 307,000 people were incarcerated; in 2016, over 1.5 million\u00a0people were incarcerated.<sup>2<\/sup><span class=\"s5\">\u00a0<\/span>With incarceration having thus become a pervasive issue, the question of where and how to count this ever-increasing number of people has become political and thorny.<sup><span class=\"s1\">3 <\/span><\/sup>Due to the reliance on the decennial Census for districting, much of the discussion has centered around the proper application of the \u201cusual residence\u201d rule, which counts a person at the place where he or she \u201clives and sleeps most of the time.\u201d<sup><span class=\"s1\">4 <\/span><\/sup>Although such a standard may produce a clear location for the majority of the population, the \u201cusual residence\u201d Census standard presents real issues when considering prisoners, who usually reside in a specific location, for a relatively short period of time, against their will.<sup><span class=\"s1\">5\u00a0<\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Multiple issues are raised by the application of the usual residence rule. Do we count prisoners at the prison on Census Day? If not at the prison, then where? Is it lawful to alter the data from the Census? Is it lawful to <span class=\"s8\"><i>not <\/i><\/span>alter the data from the Census? Which option most comports with our ideas of what it means to be a citi- zen in a democracy? What are the consequences for districts and citizens if we count prisoners in either the location of the prison, or their home prior to incarceration?<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">The goal of this Note is not to state what we <span class=\"s8\"><i>must <\/i><\/span>do in regard to these questions, but only what we <span class=\"s8\"><i>should <\/i><\/span>do if we are attempting to adhere to either of the two democratic theories of representation suggested by the one-person, one-vote principle from <span class=\"s8\"><i>Reynolds v. Sims <\/i><\/span>.<span class=\"s1\">6 <\/span>This Note addresses the current state of the law and the Census, and analyzes the two democratic theories of representation: Voter Equality and Representational Equality. This Note argues that the current regime of counting prisoners does not successfully adhere to either of the two theories, and that counting prisoners in their pre-incarceration address, although imperfect, adheres more closely to both theories.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/26\/2018\/12\/Where-Does-a-Prisoner-Live-4.pdf\">Continue Reading Where Does a Prisoner Live?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Until the past few decades, the question of where to count prisoners1\u00a0for purposes of districting was a relatively benign inquiry, if it came up at all. However, an explosion of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":132,"featured_media":0,"parent":318,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"abstract.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":"","_tec_slr_enabled":"","_tec_slr_layout":""},"class_list":["post-322","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"ticketed":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/132"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1117,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/322\/revisions\/1117"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}