When Your Body Counts But Your Vote Does Not: How Prison Gerrymandering Distorts Political Representation
Posted on AllSides July 3rd, 2021
From The Left
ANALYSIS
When Floyd Wilson first learned of the term “prison gerrymandering,” he’d already been incarcerated for more than 35 years. He was taking a college seminar in a prison in Graterford, Pennsylvania—the fourth of five correctional facilities he’s lived in over the decades.
Wilson grew up in Southwest Philadelphia and was sentenced to life in prison in 1976 as a juvenile for first degree murder. In every U.S. census that’s taken place since his conviction, he learned that day in class, he’s been counted not as a Philadelphian but as a...