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HEADLINE: PRISONER COUNT TIPS CENSUS SCALES / FUNDS DON'T GO TO THEIR HOMETOWNS

BYLINE: By Zachary R. Dowdy. ALBANY BUREAU  


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Albany-In the census, prisoners-or, more precisely, the location of their cells-will count, too.

This week, correctional officials begin dropping U.S. census forms into the prison cells of the state's 72,000 inmates, much like the questionnaires sent to American homes that federal officials use to dole out hundreds of billions in aid. A bipartisan task force also uses the census to draw legislative boundaries.

But while most prisoners in New York State lived in poor New York City neighborhoods when they were convicted, the fact that federal law requires them to be counted as residents of the towns hosting the prisons reaps economic and political benefits for those communities, most of which are rural Republican strongholds.

In what several observers call an "unintended consequence" of the methods used in the decennial count, money that will be distributed using the census' population and income figures will end up in financially strapped, mostly white communities where the prisons are located, rather than the largely poor, mostly minority urban communities from which most prisoners come. Eighty-two percent of state prisoners are black and Latino. "By building prisons and taking people and counting them outside of where they live, you're taking a minority population and making it smaller," said David Bositis, an analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a black think tank in Washington, D.C. "There are places that are advantaged by this, and if somebody is advantaged, somebody is disadvantaged."

Just how much one community benefits and another is hurt due to the shift in federal dollars is unclear. Jim Baldwin, manager of the U.S. Census office in Albany, said nearly $ 2 trillion in federal funds will be distributed nationwide over the next decade.

Ronald Roth, planning director for Greene County, just south of Albany, said the 3,000 prisoners at two correctional facilities in Coxsackie make the community "more competitive" for federal grants distributed on a per capita basis. Prisoners, who earn little if any money, inflate the town's population and drive down its median income on the census, a baseline indicator for the next 10 years, Roth said.

"For the town of Coxsackie, the prisons make the poverty level much higher," Roth said. Coxsackie received several Department of Housing and Urban Development grants of up to $ 600,000 each based on figures from the 1990 census, which showed the 2,100 prisoners in Coxsackie were 27.5 percent of the town's population of 7,633.

With 3,000 prisoners now, Coxsackie is all but sure to benefit from the population boost generated by the prisons. How Coxsackie benefits from its prisons is the subject of a recent TV documentary, "Yes, In My Backyard," by filmmaker Tracy Huling, a criminal justice policy analyst.

"That increase would give us an added bonus and make us even more competitive," Roth said. "All things being equal, is it enough to push you over the edge? Sure."

The population surge can also affect the electoral power of a community. Since legislative districts are redrawn by state lawmakers after the census, an increase in prisoners, who can't vote, could affect how the lines are drawn and how political power is distributed, said Gary King, a redistricting expert at Harvard University.

On Dec. 31, 1990, the prison population in New York State was 54,895, while this Jan. 1 it was 71,466, state data show.

A little more than 65 percent of the state's prisoners come from New York City, while only six of the 71 state prisons are in the city. There are no prisons on Long Island, but 6.6 percent of prisoners come from Nassau and Suffolk. Twelve percent come from poor urban areas upstate.

Up to 93 percent of the prisoners are spread thinly throughout Republican districts. The fact that so many come from relatively few New York City neighborhoods and other urban centers reduces urban electoral power while slightly boosting it for rural enclaves, observers said.

"This is what I would call an unintended effect of incarceration," said Marc Mauer, assistant director of The Sentencing Project, a Washington, D.C., group that advocates for criminal justice reform. "Nobody ever said that one of the consequences should be to dilute black and Latino voting strength, but that's what we're doing."

Officials with the U.S. Census in Washington, D.C., declined to discuss how the methods they have selected to count prisoners could affect either the distribution of federal aid or the drawing of political boundaries.

Nationwide, similar concerns about the census count of prisoners have sprung up. Rep. Mark Green (R-Wis.) sponsored a bill to allow Wisconsin prisoners housed in other states to be counted in the 2000 census as Wisconsin residents. Green said Wisconsin could otherwise forfeit between $ 5 million and $ 8 million each year, and possibly a congressional seat. The pending bill has backing from lawmakers from other prisoner-exporting states.

Arizona passed a law allowing cities to annex prisons on government or unowned land within 15 miles of their borders, to maximize aid doled out on a per capita basis.

Yet in New York State, aides to Republican legislators in districts with several prisons said the impact of the population shift is likely minimal and merely happenstance, despite the claims of a new report that politics plays a role.

The report, to be released today, finds that "the state has transferred a population the size of Portland, Maine, from downstate communities of color to white communities upstate, and with it the financial benefits and electoral influence that comes with those numbers," said Robert Gangi, chairman of City Project. The organization, a coalition of groups that deal with urban issues,, prepared the report, called "Following the Dollars: Where New York State Spends Its Prison Moneys." Gangi also heads the Correctional Association, a state-chartered prison watchdog group.

But Joe Maltese, spokesman for Sen. Dale Volker (R-Depew), whose district contains six prisons, said in response that prison location is not a partisan issue since the Democrat-controlled Assembly endorsed every prison built. Volker chairs the codes committee, which handles criminal statutes.

He said the number of New York City residents in upstate prisons may be "statistically insignificant" because they are spread out over so much area and because their communities of origin may not be any less eligible for funds.

Moreover, Maltese said, attempts to build prisons in New York City, Long Island and Westchester or Rockland Counties have often been met with cries of "Not in my backyard."

"This is a consequence of financial, infrastructural and logistical components," Maltese said. "The communities that do want prisons are rural, upstate communities that welcome them because they have the land, the land is cheap and it doesn't conflict with the community."

In Malone-home to three prisons, one of which was built after 1990- the effect has been mixed. Twenty percent of the population of 15,000 people is incarcerated, said Boyce Sherwin, director of community development.

The most obvious benefit of having a prison is employment, said Sherwin, who downplayed the overall benefit to his town, saying the extra residents also take a toll on the city's infrastructure.

"Has it been a great boon to this area? Absolutely not," he said. "Are there problems? Yes."

But Sherwin added that the 2000 census will usher in new figures and may alter the town's eligibility for funding since the prison population has grown significantly since 1990, from under 3,000 to nearly 5,000. He said Malone has secured federal grants from $ 200,000 to $ 400,000 as many as 18 times since the 1990 census and that the prisoners' economic profiles and numbers contributed to making the town eligible.

"Population and median income were 150 out of 600 points-that's a quarter of the application," Sherwin said, referring to the grant criteria. "So it's a big deal."



LOAD-DATE: April 3, 2000