PODCAST: Locking Up the Vote: Prison-Based Gerrymandering and its Impact on the Black Vote

Abstract

Later this year, the redistricting process will begin and the states will begin drawing the districts that will determine the allocation of political power and representation for the next ten years. However, a practice known as prison-based gerrymandering threatens the principle of “one person, one vote” and risks unfairly diluting the political power of Black and urban communities, while inflating the power of white, rural ones.

On this episode of Justice Above All, Thurgood Marshall Institute Senior Researcher Kesha Moore talks to the Executive Director of the Abolitionist Law Center, Saleem Holbrook, and Cara McClellan, Assistant Counsel at the Legal Defense Fund, about the inherent racism surrounding prison-based gerrymandering and how it continues to feed the prison industrial complex.

Keywords: gerrymandering, prison-based gerrymandering, political participation, elections, Black voters