Report Shows How Prison Gerrymanders Distort Democracy Across U.S.
by Chuck Sharman
In a report compiled on November 25, 2025, the nonprofit Prison Policy Initiative (PPI) broke down the impact of prison “gerrymandering” in 14 of the 33 states that have so far failed to halt the federal Census Bureau’s practice of counting prisoners as residents of the prison that confines them, rather than the communities from which they came—and to which they will most likely return upon release.
This can often, but not necessarily, lead to distortions in federal funding allocations, according to PPI. Quoting the Project on Government Oversight in a follow-up report on December 9, 2025, PPI said that “the complex nature of federal funding programs and the ways they use census data make that figure impossible to calculate.” However, counting people where they are confined but cannot vote serves to inflate the political voice of the largely rural and white communities where prisons are built, at the expense of the largely urban and less-white communities where prisoners come from.
In Oregon, for example, there were 3,672 prisoners held in the Powder River, Snake River and Warner Creek Correctional Facilities, all counted as residents of state house District 60. But since nonwhite people are overrepresented in Oregon prisons, as in most U.S. lockups, nearly 60% of District 60’s Black population was imprisoned. As a result, the district’s nonincarcerated residents enjoyed an outsized voice in the state legislature, while the remaining residents in the districts those prisoners came from had their voice diluted—the Black residents especially so.
In contrast, the state constitution provides that, “[f]or the purpose of voting, no person shall be deemed to have gained, or lost a residence … while confined in any public prison.” See: Ore. Const. Art IV § 4. In countermanding that, the Census Bureau claimed to be merely counting people “where they live and sleep most of the time.” But this is bogus, PPI pointed out, since three-quarters of prisoners will be moved at least once, and 12% will “serve time in at least five facilities before returning home.”
In Alaska, none of the 1,471 prisoners held at Goose Creek Correctional Center and Point Mackenzie Rehabilitation Farm could vote. But since they made up 8% of the population of state house District 30, it could accomplish with 92 voters what required 100 voters from districts with no prison. It’s also unknown how many of those prisoners would have supported the District’s Rep. Kevin McCabe (R) if they could vote. But his ballot win in 2024 over a fellow Republican could have been complicated in a district whose map extended into territory currently included in neighboring District 29, where Democrat Brandon Kowalski lost to Republican Becky Schwanke by just over 900 votes.
Some of the worst examples of this distortion came from West Virginia, where federal prisoners held by the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) at three lockups in Hazelton accounted for 18.3% of the population of state house District 83. Along with Districts 45 and 63, there were 6,801 people held by the BOP in the state, all but 41 of whom weren’t even from West Virginia—meaning the Census Bureau essentially loaned these rural districts nonvoting population from other states to artificially inflate their voting power, and the state’s as a whole.
Other state house districts with gross distortions included Oklahoma District 56, where 14% of the population was confined in the Great Plains Correctional Facility and the BOP lockups in El Reno; Wyoming District 2, which had 13.6% of its population held in the Wyoming Honor Conservation Camp & Boot Camp, the Wyoming Medium Correctional Institution and the Wyoming Women’s Center; and Louisiana District 22, with 11.7% of its population penned in the Natchatoches Parish Detention Center, the BOP facility in Pollock and two prisons privately owned by LaSalle Corrections. See: Prison Gerrymandering Skews Representation, Not Funding Formulas, PPI (Dec. 2025); and One-Page Guides to State-Level Gerrymandering, PPI (Nov. 2025).
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