PHILADELPHIA, January 28, 2022 — Civil rights leaders held a press conference outside the City of Philadelphia’s State Road prison facilities in the Northeast, calling on City Council and the Kenney administration to end prison gerrymandering in the Council district map. Council was first urged to take this step in a Redistricting Roadmap submitted to the members in October 2021.
The Legislative Reapportionment Commission (LRC), the body responsible for redrawing state House and Senate districts, voted to reallocate in their redistricting data roughly 30,000 Pennsylvanians held in state-run prisons during the 2020 Census. This decision was championed by Rep. Joanna McClinton, the first person of color ever to serve on the LRC, who understood the implications of this issue for racial equity — most of the people incarcerated are Black and Brown, being held in prisons located in areas that are predominantly white. This effectively robs political power from these individuals’ home communities and shifts it to those mostly white, rural areas. If City Council were to use the same data as the LRC, approximately 7,000 Philadelphians would be counted back at their home or last-known addresses.
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