BILL ANALYSIS                                                                                                                                                                                                    Ó



                                                                      



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                                 THIRD READING


          Bill No:  AB 1986
          Author:   Davis (D)
          Amended:  3/29/12 in Assembly
          Vote:     21

           
           SENATE ELECTIONS & CONSTITUT. AMEND. COMM.  :  3-2, 6/19/12
          AYES:  Correa, Lieu, Yee
          NOES:  La Malfa, Gaines

           SENATE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE  :  Senate Rule 28.8
           
           ASSEMBLY FLOOR  :  41-31, 5/7/12 - See last page for vote


           SUBJECT  :    Redistricting

           SOURCE  :     Author


           DIGEST  :    This bill makes various modifications to a 
          provision of existing law that requires the California 
          Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to 
          provide information to the Citizens Redistricting 
          Commission (CRC) regarding the last known residence of each 
          inmate incarcerated in a state adult correctional facility.

           ANALYSIS  :    Existing law: 

          1.Requires the CDCR, not sooner than April 1, 2020, and not 
            later than July 1, 2020, to furnish to the CRC 
            information regarding the last known residence of each 
            inmate incarcerated in a state adult correctional 
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            facility, except an inmate whose last known residence is 
            outside California.  Requires CDCR, in 2030 and in each 
            year ending in the number zero thereafter, to provide 
            this information to the CRC not sooner than the decennial 
            census day and not later than 90 days thereafter. 

          2.Requires the information furnished by the CDCR to 
            include, for each inmate, a unique identifier, other than 
            the inmate's name or CDCR number, and last known address 
            information that is sufficiently specific to determine 
            the congressional, State Senatorial, State Assembly, or 
            Board of Equalization (BOE) district in which the 
            inmate's last known residence is located.  Provides that 
            the information may include, but not be limited to, ZIP 
            Code information or street address information from which 
            a ZIP Code can be derived. 

          3.Requests the CRC to deem each incarcerated person as 
            residing at his or her last known residence, rather than 
            at the institution of his or her incarceration, and to 
            use the information furnished to it by the CDCR in 
            carrying out its redistricting responsibilities. 

          This bill:

          1.Requires the CDCR to provide information to the CRC 
            regarding the census block of the last known place of 
            residence for each inmate incarcerated in a state adult 
            correctional facility, instead of providing information 
            about the ZIP Code of the last known place of residence. 

          2.Requires CDCR, when providing information to the CRC 
            regarding the last known places of residence of inmates 
            incarcerated in state adult correctional facilities, to 
            exclude all inmates in state custody for whom a last 
            known place of residence within California cannot be 
            determined and all inmates in federal custody in a 
            facility in California. 

          3.Requests the CRC, when using information regarding the 
            last known place of residence for inmates that is 
            furnished to the CRC pursuant to existing law and this 
            bill, to do all of the following: 








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             A.   Refrain from publishing information regarding a 
               specific inmate's last known place of residence; 

             B.   Deem an inmate in state custody in a facility 
               within California for whom the last known place of 
               residence is either outside of California or cannot be 
               determined, or an inmate in federal custody in a 
               facility within California, to reside at an unknown 
               geographical location in the state and to exclude such 
               inmates from the population count for any district, 
               ward, or precinct; and, 

             C.   Adjust race and ethnicity data in districts, wards, 
               and precincts that contain prisons in a manner that 
               reflects reductions in the local population as inmates 
               are included in the population count of the district, 
               ward, or precinct of their last known place of 
               residence. 

           Comments
           
          AB 420 (Davis), Chapter 548, Statutes of 2011, which 
          requests the CRC, when adjusting district boundaries for 
          the state Legislature, Congress, and the BOE, to deem an 
          incarcerated person as residing at his or her last known 
          residence, rather than the institution of his or her 
          incarceration.  AB 420 was intended to end the practice 
          whereby incarcerated individuals are counted, for 
          redistricting purposes, as residing at the prison in which 
          they are incarcerated, instead of at the locations where 
          they last resided prior to incarceration.  Critics of that 
          practice argue that it artificially inflates the political 
          influence of districts where prisons are located, at the 
          expense of other voters. 

          This bill makes a number of changes to the provisions of AB 
          420 in an attempt to allow for that bill to be more 
          effectively implemented.  Specifically, this bill requires 
          CDCR to provide residence information for inmates by census 
          blocks, instead of by ZIP Codes, since census blocks are 
          the unit of geography that typically are used to draw 
          district lines.  Additionally, this bill seeks to provide 
          greater guidance to the CRC about how to deal with inmates 
          for whom reliable residence information is not available, 







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          and seeks to ensure that information provided to the CRC by 
          the CDCR is not considered a public record. 

           FISCAL EFFECT  :    Appropriation:  No   Fiscal Com.:  Yes   
          Local:  No

           SUPPORT  :   (Verified  7/2/12)

          Friends Committee on Legislation of California
          Prison Policy Initiative
          Greater Sacramento Urban League
          NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.


           ARGUMENTS IN SUPPORT  :    According to the author:

               This bill is a follow-up to AB 420 (Chapter 548, 
               Statutes of 2011), which requested the California 
               Citizens' Commission on Redistricting to count 
               inmates, for redistricting purposes, based on their 
               last known address (according to Courts/Corrections' 
               records) rather than their place of incarceration.  
               This is based on the authority in Elections Code 
               Section 2025 pertaining to a person's domicile for 
               voting purposes. 

               AB 1986 seeks to fine-tune the provisions of AB 420 
               by: 

               1.     Extending the scope of AB 420 to federal 
                 prisons by requesting the Commission to remove all 
                 federal prisoners from any data collected (the 
                 rationale for this is the difficulty of obtaining 
                 data on the federal inmate population within 
                 California from the federal government); 

               2.     Increasing precision in the inmate address data 
                 to be provided to the Commission by expressly 
                 referencing census block data, which is the standard 
                 for map-able addresses; 

               3.     Requesting that the Commission not publish any 
                 inmate home address data to address privacy and 
                 safety concerns; 







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               4.     Requesting the Commission to adjust race and 
                 ethnicity data appropriately in the districts 
                 containing prisons. 

          Proponents indicate that:

           Prison-based gerrymandering unfairly dilutes the voting 
            strength of communities of color, and undermines 
            principles of fair representation. Collectively, 
            African-Americans and Latinos are approximately 40% of 
            the state population, but 70% of the prison population, 
            with Latinos incarcerated at nearly two times the rate of 
            whites, and African Americans at approximately six times 
            the rate of whites.

           Prison-based gerrymandering deprives our communities of 
            the representation to which they are entitled.  AB 1986 
            will help ensure that this civil rights issue is 
            addressed properly in California.  Ending prison-based 
            gerrymandering has been endorsed by civil rights 
            organizations including MALDEF, the NAACP Legal Defense 
            Fund, and the Asian Law Alliance. LDF, the nation's 
            oldest civil rights law firm, is committed to the full 
            and equal participation of all persons in our democracy, 
            and supports AB 1986.

          The Prison Policy Initiative, a non-profit, non-partisan 
          organization that documents the effects of mass 
          incarceration on democracy.  For the past ten years they 
          have studied how Census Bureau data is used in 
          redistricting.  They closely track the effects of prison 
          populations on districts at all levels of government across 
          the country.  They discovered that most California counties 
          with large prisons already take steps to limit the impact 
          of prison populations on their County Supervisory 
          Districts.  These counties include: Amador, Del Norte, 
          Imperial, Kern, Kings, Lassen, Madera, Monterey, San Luis 
          Obispo, and Tuolumne County.  These ten counties remove the 
          prison population from their redistricting data, and AB 420 
          presented a uniform state-wide solution. California became 
          the fourth state to end the practice of prison-based 
          gerrymandering, extending its counties' efforts to State 
          and Congressional legislative districts.  AB 420 aimed to 







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          prepare the State to count incarcerated people at home for 
          redistricting purposes after the 2020 Census, but after 
          analyzing New York and Maryland's implementation of their 
          laws ending prison-based gerrymandering, they support the 
          improvements that AB 1986 proposes to make to California's 
          law.

           ASSEMBLY FLOOR  :  41-31, 5/7/12
          AYES:  Alejo, Allen, Ammiano, Atkins, Beall, Block, 
            Blumenfield, Bonilla, Bradford, Buchanan, Butler, Charles 
            Calderon, Campos, Carter, Cedillo, Davis, Dickinson, Eng, 
            Feuer, Fong, Fuentes, Gatto, Gordon, Hayashi, Roger 
            Hernández, Hill, Hueso, Lara, Bonnie Lowenthal, Ma, 
            Mendoza, Mitchell, Pan, V. Manuel Pérez, Skinner, 
            Solorio, Swanson, Torres, Wieckowski, Williams, John A. 
            Pérez
          NOES:  Achadjian, Bill Berryhill, Chesbro, Conway, Cook, 
            Donnelly, Beth Gaines, Garrick, Gorell, Grove, Hagman, 
            Halderman, Harkey, Huber, Huffman, Jeffries, Jones, 
            Knight, Logue, Mansoor, Miller, Morrell, Nestande, 
            Nielsen, Norby, Olsen, Silva, Smyth, Valadao, Wagner, 
            Yamada
          NO VOTE RECORDED:  Brownley, Fletcher, Furutani, Galgiani, 
            Hall, Monning, Perea, Portantino

          DLW:n  7/2/12   Senate Floor Analyses 

                         SUPPORT/OPPOSITION:  SEE ABOVE

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