SEN. & COALITION ANNOUNCE CAMPAIGN TO END PRISON-BASED GERRYMANDERING BEFORE 2010 CENSUS— TODAY AT 10AM!

NEW YORK – On the steps of City Hall on Thursday at 10AM, Senator Eric T. Schneiderman will join forces with a statewide coalition to announce a new organizing campaign plan to end prison-based gerrymandering in New York State before the 2010 Census.



 

Led by Citizen Action New York, the new coalition will be represented by the Prison Policy Initiative, New York Civil Liberties Union, Demos, Common Cause, the Brennan Center for Justice, Fortune Society, Bronx Defenders, Praxis Project, Correctional Association of New York, Community Service Society, New York City AIDS Housing Network (NYCAHN), Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Center for Law & Social Justice, Nu Leadership Policy Group, Prison Families of New York and Exponents.



 

The coalition’s goal is to organize across the state to pass Senator Schneiderman’s bill, S.1633, which would require New York State to count incarcerated persons in their home communities--rather than in the districts where they are incarcerated--for purposes of drawing legislative district lines. If passed, it would be the first law in the nation to count prisoners in their home communities for districting purposes. 



 

Because New York draws legislative districts around prisons and counts the people confined there – who can’t vote – as residents of the prison, New York in effect uses the non-voting prison population to award greater legislative representation to districts that contain prisons at the expense of the communities that most incarcerated people call home. In one legislative district in New York, 7 percent of its “residents” are in prison. 



 

Allowing communities to take in populations by force just to inflate legislative districts with prisons, violates any sense of equal protection or fundamental fairness.  It also creates perverse incentives for elected officials to support harsh mandatory minimum sentences, like the now-reformed Rockefeller Drug Laws.



 

The announcement will be followed by a statewide organizing meeting, to include more than 50 community-based organizations focused on passing this legislation.


 

WHO: Senator Eric T. Schneiderman, elected officials, Citizen Action New York, Prison Policy Initiative, New York Civil Liberties Union, Demos, Common Cause, the Brennan Center for Justice, Fortune Society, Bronx Defenders, Praxis Project, Correctional Association, Community Service Society, New York City AIDS Housing Network (NYCAHN), Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Center for Law & Social Justice, Nu Leadership Policy Group, Prison Families of New York and Exponents
 
WHAT: Announcement of statewide campaign plan to pass historic legislation to make New York the first state in the nation to end prison-based gerrymandering