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HARRISBURG (AP) – Inmates in Pennsylvania state prisons will be counted in their home districts and not where their prisons are located after a split vote Tuesday by the five-member panel tracing the maps of legislative districts this year.
The Pennsylvania Legislative Redistribution Commission voted 3-2 for the policy change that was introduced by House Minority Leader Joanna McClinton, D-Philadelphia.
“We cannot wait another 10 years. The time has come to correct this injustice ”, she said.
The vote changes the long-standing policy of counting inmates to the State House and Senate districts where their state prisons are located.
Republican House and Senate leaders voted no, while McClinton was joined by Democratic Senate leader and committee chairman, former University of Pittsburgh chancellor Mark Nordenberg.
Nordenberg, appointed by the Democratic-majority state Supreme Court as the committee’s decisive vote, said for months he “I didn’t think I would be where I am today” but had kept an open mind.
“When a system owns and counts a person in one place but forces them to vote in another, it creates a fundamental problem of fairness.” he said.
He said he counts inmates in the legislative districts of their prison “Distorts the process of redistribution by granting certain categories of voters – in this case voters living in districts with state correctional institutions – votes that carry more weight than votes cast in districts that do not ‘do not include such institutions. “
The commission is using data from the 2020 census to redraw the 203 state House and 50 Senate districts for use from next year’s elections.
The proposal would cover most of the state’s approximately 37,000 inmates who are scattered across 23 facilities in 19 counties. Many prisons are located in largely white rural areas, while their prison populations are much more racially diverse.
The change does not affect the way federal and county prisoners are counted, leaving what Senate Majority Leader Kim Ward of Westmoreland County has described as inconsistent.
Ward said the result will be “A big mess. And we’re going to end up in court.
The latest Correctional Service figures indicate that Philadelphia is by far the most common originating county for state prison inmates, with more than 9,000 inmates, or about one in four. Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh, has over 2,500 state prison inmates.
Inmates who were homeless before being locked up would be counted where they had most recently stayed or received regular services.
At least 1,000 inmates each come from some of Pennsylvania’s largest counties – Berks, Dauphin, Delaware, Lancaster, Lehigh, Montgomery and York.
It would not apply to about 60 state prisoners who were living in other states when they were incarcerated or those serving life sentences. Republican leaders also stressed that others in group neighborhoods, including students and people in care facilities, will be counted as the census counted them, far from their home neighborhoods.
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