Moreover, every vote in these districts counts a little more than every other voter in the state, while “unfairly diminished” communities have votes that count a little bit less than every other voter in the state. Under our present system of prison gerrymandering, Senate Districts 27 and 31 and House Districts 15 and 20, located in Warwick and Cranston, are the beneficiaries of a system that syphons political power from BIPOC communities.
As noted by Providence College Political Science Professor Adam Myers at the September 23rd Redistricting Commission hearing, this causes the political strength of communities surrounding prisons to be “unfairly inflated,”, while the political strength of the communities from which these prisoners come are “unfairly diminished.” Given the racial makeup of our prison population, it’s plain to see that Black and brown neighborhoods in Providence, Pawtucket and Central Falls are the most negatively impacted, making this form of gerrymandering textbook systemic racism. Under the law, each district should have roughly the same number of people, but by including prison populations in some districts, the number of voters a candidate must convince to vote for them drops appreciably. Prison gerrymandering is the process by which incarcerated people, who cannot vote, are counted for purposes of drawing districts. And the latest meeting held in Providence at the PCTA ( Providence Career and Technical Academy) the issue blew up in a big way. Almost very meeting of the Rhode Island General Assembly’s Redistricting Commission has touched on the topic of prison gerrymandering.
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