BILL ANALYSIS �
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|SENATE RULES COMMITTEE | AB 1986|
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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
CONTINUED
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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
Hern�ndez, Hill, Hueso, Lara, Bonnie Lowenthal, Ma,
Mendoza, Mitchell, Pan, V. Manuel P�rez, Skinner,
Solorio, Swanson, Torres, Wieckowski, Williams, John A.
P�rez
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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