A recent Op-Ed in the New York Times highlights the complexity of where prisoners should be counted in the 2010 Census: where they are incarcerated on April 1, 2010, or where they will be living upon release and utilizing re-entry programs and services? Standard Census enumeration practice dictates the former, which according to author raises two fundamental issues:

"First, inmates in nearly all states aren’t allowed to vote, yet their presence affects electoral representation in places where they do not live permanently.

 

Second, a disproportionate number of state prison inmates are from urban areas. Most state prisons, however, are in rural areas. As a result, resources and electoral authority are transferred from inner cities to rural jurisdictions.

 

The effects are plain to see. Cities lose out on funds that could be used both for crime prevention and prisoner rehabilitation; rural areas do their best to thwart reform because they don’t want to lose the benefits that prisons confer on them."

 

The author then goes on to suggest that the Obama administration implement a solution to mitigate this problem: 

"What can be done?

The politics are complicated. Municipal leaders — including the mayor of New York City — support counting inmates in their last known address before incarceration. Rural officials support keeping the residence rule as it is. Criminal justice experts think it’s best to count inmates as residents of the communities where they are likely to return after their incarceration. (This, after all, is where the re-entry programs need to be.)

The Obama administration would do well to find a middle path. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Robert Groves, director of the Census Bureau, should propose an administrative change to the residence rule: Inmates returning to their home communities before the next census period — those serving a sentence of 10 years or less — should be counted in their home communities. Those serving more than 10 years should be counted where they are in custody. (The residence rules for other large transient groups, like college students, wouldn’t be affected by this change.)

This proposal is not perfect, but it would begin to rectify the political imbalance inherent in the residence rule — an imbalance that distorts both the census and basic democratic principles."