Connecticut must end practice of ‘prison gerrymandering’

It has been a long time coming. The NAACP is suing the state for what it is calling “prison gerrymandering.” Gerrymandering is the practice of manipulating the boundaries of an electoral constituency to favor one party or class of people. The NAACP terms “prison gerrymandering” as the practice of counting prisoners in the towns where they are incarcerated, rather than at their pre-incarceration address, for purposes of drawing state legislative district lines

The lawsuit was filed June 28 in U.S. District Court in New Haven by the Rule of Law Clinic at the Yale Law School and the NAACP.

Secretary of the State Denise Merrill and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy are named in the suit.

The lawsuit asks the court to declare the current redistricting maps unconstitutional.

Brad Berry, NAACP general counsel, said the purpose is to shift voting power to more rural and less racially diverse areas where the state has chosen to locate the prisons, thereby diminishing voting power in cities such as Hartford, Bridgeport and New Haven, where a large number of black and Hispanic prisoners lived before they were sent to prison.

The current district lines, according to the lawsuit, violates the “one person, one vote” equal protection mandate of the 14th Amendment.

Yale Law School student Ashley Hall said in some districts in the northern part of the state, as much as 10 percent of the population counted toward redistricting were prisoners.

“That means that without them, the population of that district would not meet the threshold. At a baseline level, in order to have one person, one vote, each individual should be represented equally and have equal voting power,” Hall said.

Despite what appears to be unfair to many residents and lawmakers, state Sen. Gary Winfield, D-New Haven, said while it is a priority for him, there isn’t much of an appetite at the Capitol to make changes — including with Democrats — because of uncertainty as to how it would play out in redistricting.

So, it comes down to politics, not people.

It seems to us that kind of thinking flies in the opposite direction of what the state is doing to revamp its judicial system. Doesn’t diluting the electoral power of the urban centers where a large percentage of the minority prison population comes from also mean diluting the resources necessary to effectively keep these men and women out of — or from returning to — the prison system?

It certainly seems that way to us.

We also don’t like the idea that a disenfranchised group may be being used as pawns to one-up one political party over another.

The plaintiffs said this is the first statewide challenge in the country on this issue and the possibility exists they may file lawsuits in other states.

We think this is an important lawsuit and one that bears paying close attention to.

The eventual ruling — for or against the plaintiffs — will certainly be one of the most consequential decisions in Connecticut’s arena of politics.

We hope the ruling will be free of political bias and comes to the only conclusion that will be fair to all.

Connecticut should end the practice of “prison gerrymandering.”