TERRE HAUTE —
Terre Haute is joining hundreds of other communities with big prison populations by voting to remove those prisoners when drawing legislative districts.
At the urging of the city’s legal department, the City Council voted unanimously Thursday evening to exclude the approximately 3,200 federal inmates in the city from being counted when officials draw new city council district boundaries this year. The move will allow each district to have approximately the same number of eligible voters, a redistricting priority.
Inmates in the federal prison cannot vote, so their prior inclusion in District 1 meant that approximately one-third of the residents of that district were ineligible to cast ballots.
“I think it’s great news that the Terre Haute City Council is going to avoid prison-based gerrymandering and give every resident of the city the same access to government regardless of whether they live next to the federal prison.” said Peter Wagner executive director of the Prison Policy Initiative, a Massachusetts-based not-for-profit that has worked to remove prison populations from legislative districts around the country during the past decade.
The problem posed by non-voting prison populations in legislative districts has become larger as prison populations in the U.S. have grown, Wagner said. In the past several decades, the U.S. prison population has grown from fewer than 200,000 in 1970 to 1.6 million in 2010, he noted.
In drawing the city’s six legislative districts this year, city officials will aim to have about 9,500 residents in each district. The removal of the 3,200 prisoners will bring the population of District 1 to about 8,100, city officials said last month.
While officials in the Terre Haute Legal Department will draft new council boundaries this year, it will be up to the City Council to approve those districts. New districts must be drawn according to 2010 census figures by the end of this year.
Reporter Arthur Foulkes can be reached at (812) 231-4232 or arthur.foulkes@tribstar.com.
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