End Prison Gerrymandering Act

End Prison Gerrymandering Act – Plain English Summary

This bill addresses how incarcerated people are counted for the purposes of drawing political district maps. Currently, the U.S. Census Bureau counts prisoners as residents of the location where they are incarcerated, rather than where they lived before being imprisoned. This means that communities with large prisons receive a population "boost" that can increase their political representation, even though prisoners generally cannot vote and have no real ties to those communities.

The End Prison Gerrymandering Act would require that incarcerated individuals be counted at their last known home address — where they actually lived before going to prison — rather than at the prison's location. This change would affect how congressional districts and state legislative districts are drawn following each census, shifting political representation away from areas with prisons and back toward the communities where prisoners actually came from, which are often urban areas.

The bill primarily affects two groups of people. First, it affects residents of rural communities that host prisons, who currently benefit from inflated population counts. Second, it affects residents of urban and suburban communities — often lower-income areas — who lose political representation because their residents who are incarcerated are counted elsewhere. Advocates on both sides debate whether this change makes the system more or less fair.

The bill has been introduced in the House and referred to two committees for review. No further legislative action has been taken yet, and it has not been voted on.