just got my census in the mail. is there any reason to fill this out? why is it bad
tl;dr under the cut, but basically: it’s like livestock drawing the butchers’ lines on themselves.
It’s really easy to see the treachery of the American census with prisons/prisoners.
For one, there’s the fact that Americans gerrymander districts in part by selectively choosing whether or not to count prisoners as living in their hometowns, or whatever jurisdiction their prison camp is.
So let’s say some re-districting committee is trying to gerrymander a district to be safe for a republican, and that district is one of many throughout America where prisoners can make up a quarter or so of the population.
In many cases, rural, predominantly white towns see their population numbers boosted by population counts from prisons disproportionately made up of black and Latinx people.
In turn, states, which control how voting districts are drawn, and local governments can use those numbers to form districts filled predominantly with people who are locked behind bars and cannot vote in almost all states. Maine and Vermont are the exceptions.
Officials in some prison towns have come up with creative ways to avoid forming voting districts made up primarily of prisoners. But in many others, political lines are drawn around prisons in a way that critics deride as “prison gerrymandering.” [x]
That’s the first reason that comes to mind, the next one is a little tough because we don’t have access to confidential agreements drawn between prison corporations and the research firms they hire when prospecting for new prison construction.
Before prisons - or any business venture - can get financing, the company seeking a loan has to come up with a very detailed plan of the opportunities and risks that assures the creditor that they can count on a steady, reliable income stream for decades.
That means that prisons aren’t just scattered randomly throughout the land.
Using census data, prisons/professional consulting firms (like say McKinsey) can map communities that are lucrative markets for harvesting bodies.
Using census data, Americans can calculate the effect that an x% cut in school budgets will translate to y% increase in imprisonment rates, and will lobby governments at every level to enforce existing laws or create new ones to meet their body harvest quotas.
Now, if you want to help the butcher out by drawing the lines on yourself and your community, go ahead.
I’m not going to do that.
