Claims that 40 percent of Iowa's incarcerated population is black.
Enumerating prisoners in this manner dilutes the votes of urban and rural areas that do not have a prison within their jurisdiction. For example, nearly 40 percent of the inmates in Pennsylvania’s state prisons come from Philadelphia, which has no state prisons in its city limits (Elliott-Engel, 2009). For census and redistricting purposes, these Philadelphia citizens—nearly all of whom are black or Latino—are considered residents of the counties where they are imprisoned. These tend to be predominantly white, rural districts.8 [...] Race and ethnicity play a crucial role in these developments. On one level, the disproportionate number of blacks, Hispanics, and other historically disadvantaged groups among the incarcerated, though striking, is not altogether surprising. The social deprivation and spatial isolation of the poor and the less educated, many of whom are members of minority groups living in urban areas, tend to foster criminal acts that result in a prison sentence or other penal sanctions. Members of these groups also are at heightened risk of drawing severe sanctions because of intense state surveillance in their communities (see, e.g., Duneier, 1999; Anderson, 1999; Bourgois, 1995; Wilson, 1968, Chapter 2; Herbert, 1997). The limited legal, social, and other resources available to them once they have become involved in the criminal justice system compound the problem.