The Prison Policy Institute has published this report, describing in detail how each state government handles the problem of residency for prisoners. The report also explains how the Census Bureau is improving its data collection, so as to be helpful to states that want to treat prisoners as residents of their homes before they were incarcerated, as opposed to treating them as residents of the prison.
This subject has political implications, because of the 1960’s decisions of the Supreme Court that U.S. House districts, and legislative districts, and local government districts, must be approximately equal in population. If a rural county has 10,000 civilian residents, and also hosts several large state prisons that hold 25,000 prisoners, the state must decide whether to treat that county as having either 35,000 residents, or 10,000 residents, for purposes of redistricting. Thanks to Rick Hasen’s ElectionLawBlog for the link.
If the courts were actually concerned with “one person, one vote”, apportionment and districts would be based on qualified electors and not persons.
Total Votes / Total Seats = EQUAL votes for each seat winner.
Otherwise — how about putting ALL the FELONS into D.C. to play games with the party hack MONSTERS in the Congress and White House ??? — i.e. a 10 x 10 mile big JAIL / lunatic asylum ???
The Census has ZERO to do with representation inside a State — one more scheme dreamed up by the party hack Supremes in 1964.
Thus the low low votes in the ghetto gerrymander districts (having lots of ILLEGAL foreign folks) and the high high votes in the suburban gerrymander districts.
I have also heard that this is also why some republicans in the NY legislature opposed reforming the Rockefeller laws. The don’t want to lose their job because fewer prisoners causes their district to shrink and be merged.