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MICHAEL DUNNE: I'm Michael Dunne. There are more than 20,000 people behind bars in Oregon. Many people know of our large prison population, but there's a lesser-known fact about our prison system that can harm political representation outside the prison walls. It's called Prison gerrymandering, where non-voting prisoners are counted in the census as living in a district to pump up population numbers. And one district in Oregon, district 60 benefits from having three prisons count for their overall population. Good for that district, but bad for others. Today on the show, you'll hear from the Prison Policy Initiative which wants the Oregon Legislature to end this practice for fair political representation. Then in the last part of the show and all week, you'll hear brief conversations with Lane County Democrats and hear their views about the party locally and nationally. Mike Wessler, the communications director for the Prison Policy Initiative, thanks so much for coming on and talking with us.
MIKE WESSLER: Absolutely. I'm glad to be here.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Why don't we start with a basic question? Tell our audience, what is the Prison Policy Initiative? What do you do?
MIKE WESSLER: The Prison Policy Initiative is an organization that conducts research on the harms of mass incarceration. The United States has a mass incarceration problem. It locks up more people per capita than just not any other nation on Earth, it blocks up more people per capita than any other democracy on earth. What we do is try to produce research that shows how this 40-year experiment with mass incarceration isn't making communities safer, is destroying lives. We try to show how it harms not just the people who are behind bars, but all of us. And we try to present other ways for tackling some of the challenges that communities face related to crime, poverty, mental health issues, substance use issues. We try to show better ways to handle that than simply locking people up behind bars.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Why don't you give us sort of, you talked about a 40-year experiment, give us a little history about how we got here. And perhaps, while you're doing that, kind of help define what mass incarceration means. We use it a lot in everyday life, but perhaps there's an actual definition of what it means?
MIKE WESSLER: Yeah, so for about 200 years, the United States incarceration rates were comparable to the rest of the world. Then in the late 70s into the 80s and in the early 90s, the United States and its states started to adopt these really tough laws that locked people up behind bars and put them there for a long period of time. What this ended up happening is the populations of prisons just kind of exploded in that period went from comparable to the other countries around the globe to being hundreds of times more than some countries are, and since then, it has largely stayed on that path. In the late 2000s around 2008 nine, we started to see the first signs of some plateauing in the number of people who are behind bars. And throughout the 2010s we saw some slight decreases, you know, coming out of the pandemic, there was some slight increases in the incarceration rates after steep drops, and we've seen some steady increases ever since. We're still waiting to see whether or not that is just kind of a pandemic induced kind of change in the data that will go back to the reductions that we had seen before, or whether we're going to enter into a new era of mass incarceration where states are locking more and more people. Okay, now I think so many of us in the United States have just lived around these massive incarceration rates for so long that we don't even recognize how out of step the United States is with the rest of the nation. And it's not just conservative states. You know, there's a lot of folks who like to point at Texas, for example, as a place that incarcerates a ton of people, but the truth is, just about every state, even progressive states like Oregon, lock people up at rates that are much higher than the global average and far higher than our peers and other developed democracies. That's what the mass incarceration crisis is.
MICHAEL DUNNE: And before I get to the report that I want to talk to you about, you know, maybe help us understand, I think many people can sort of hear about mass incarceration and understand how it can harm so many people locked up. But give us an example or two of how it hurts people on the outside, the general citizenry, and how mass incarceration as a policy in our country and in our state harms the people who are not incarcerated?
MIKE WESSLER: Yeah, so let's start with those who are the closest to the incarceration that aren't behind the friends and family of incarcerated people. Okay, there's a whole cottage industry that's been set up over the last 40 years, designed to exploit these folks, because they recognize that if your son's behind bars, you're going to still pay to have phone calls with your son. If your son is behind bars and needs food to supplement the meals that people get when they're incarcerated, you're going to make sure they have money in their commissary count to pay for the overpriced commissary food. So, at that level, it's obviously massive exploitation of the friends and loved ones of incarcerated people. Then as you kind of get out further, it's kind of tears at the fabric of communities. You know what I mean by that is, when you have your friends and neighbors who have lost family members to incarceration, they're losing breadwinners who contributed to the economy of the local area. Helped to make the economy vibrant, helped to make the communities vibrant. And you know, it's worth noting that the pain of mass incarceration isn't felt equally. There are certain communities who feel it more acutely. Those communities often tend to be black and brown communities and poorer communities, even beyond those communities that have higher incarceration rates in the ways that it harms them, it harms people who are seen rather disconnected from it. And there's two examples I like to point to with this. One is during the covid pandemic, what we found was because prisons and jails were such kind of epicenters for the spread of the covid virus, that places around prisons saw their infection rates dramatically spike early in the pandemic. So literally, having a prison was making people outside of the walls of the prison sicker because the prisons were just breeding grounds for the virus that people were living in close quarters. They didn't have great ventilation, didn't have PPE, so it was impacting the health of people throughout the communities. And then, even broader, it's a waste of taxpayer dollars. You know, it is cheaper to provide someone with mental health care, access to substance use treatment, to provide economic development opportunities in their communities, than it is to lock them up behind bars. Incarcerating people is a very expensive proposition, and it's costing each of us taxpayer dollars every single day.
MICHAEL DUNNE: So, your organization just issued this recent report. I found it fascinating, because it certainly is something I never thought about. Talk about how the Census Bureau counts for people who are incarcerated?
MIKE WESSLER: This is the issue of prison gerrymandering, and it's one of those issues that highlights how mass incarceration harms all of us. So, the Census Bureau counts incarcerated people in the wrong place. It counts them as a resident of a prison cell, rather than in their home communities. You know, does this count every 10 years? Or we're asked to fill out our census cards and tell folks where we live. Now, the Census Bureau counts incarcerated people in prison cells, despite the fact that Oregon State law says that you're not a resident of the prison. Even if you're incarcerated, you maintain your residency at home, despite the fact that people who are incarcerated don't generally consider the prison their home. They won't be there long. You know, even if, for people who serve long sentences, they're generally transferred between facilities. Most people serve, you know, a number a few years, but not 10 years, and when they're released, they don't stay in those communities. They tend to go to their home communities. While they're incarcerated, they don't have interactions with those communities. But despite all of this, the Census Bureau counts them as residents of the prison cells instead of their home communities. What this ends up doing is it artificially inflates the populations of communities that contain prisons. Then every 10 years, state legislatures use the data that the Census Bureau has collected to draw new political boundaries. These are the boundaries that determine where state house of representatives and state senate districts kind of determines the outlines of those now, because those areas have inflated populations, they don't have to have as many true residents in them as they would if they were if they didn't have the prison, it makes basically lowers the bar for the number of people who are supposed to be in a state. House or state senate district now, under redistricting, every State House and Senate District is supposed to have the same population, and that's so that each person is represented equally in government. What this problem prison gerrymandering does is it gives those people who live closest to prisons a louder voice in their state and local governments, it allows them to have a louder voice on how tax dollars are spent, which what are the priorities for education, for economic development, basically any decision that's made in the State House, those people who live closest to prisons get a louder voice in that process because of prison gerrymandering.
MICHAEL DUNNE: It's interesting. As we're talking there's a huge issue right now with gerrymandering, and you even mentioned Texas and how they're trying to gerrymander it. And of course, as we've all sort of learned, gerrymandering becomes this big political issue. And I'm wondering if you're talking about counting people in one regard. But of course, if I'm understanding it correctly, prisoners don't have the opportunity to vote. Is that correct?
MIKE WESSLER: Incarcerated people don't have the opportunity to vote. Not. Well, there are, there are two states where they do, but in Oregon, they don't. They, you know, regain the right to vote after they're incarcerated, but they don't have the right to vote while they're incarcerated. Now, I think it's worth taking a step back, though, okay, because this is obviously a voting rights issue. You know, voting is one way and kind of the way that people think about interacting with their government most frequently. But it's not the only way. You know, we like to think of this as an issue of representation, rather than just voting. Kind of take a bigger picture, look at it, and that's because we all have the ability to go to our elected officials and express our frustrations or our desires. And incarcerated people, they may not be able to vote, but they still have that right too. So do non-citizens, so do children, so do other people who can't vote for whatever reason. So, we like to think of it as a representation issue, rather than just a voting issue. And you mentioned Texas, and I think it's worth noting that prison gerrymandering is different than most of the other types of gerrymandering that happens during redistricting and most of the debates that happen around redistricting now, redistricting is often a very contentious issue. Prison gerrymandering has often defied some of the partisan bounds that consume so many of the other debates around redistricting. You know, in Montana, a beat red state, they had a Republican super majority that nearly unanimously voted to end prison gerrymandering. The Republican governor signed the bill into law. Democrats supported it. Lots of people were happy about this measure, changing, changing the way that incarcerated people were counted. Similarly, I've talked a lot about the legislature in prison gerrymandering, but it also happens at the local government level. So the communities that often benefit the most from prison gerrymandering at the state government level, in the state legislature, they also experience the problems of prison gerrymandering in their city council districts and in their county commission districts. So many of the same communities that benefit from prison gerrymandering at the state level have taken steps to fix the problem when they're drawing their county and city commission district lines. So, they also experience the problem of prison gerrymandering.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Tell us about what your organization is sort of recommending in terms of changes here in Oregon or nationally as well.
MIKE WESSLER: Yeah. So ultimately, we would like the Census Bureau to change how it counts incarcerated people. However, we've received signs that they're not likely to do this for the 2030 census, which will be the next time that Oregon draws new district lines. The good news is Oregon doesn't have to just go along with whatever the Census Bureau has chosen. There's a growing number of states I mentioned Montana, but New York has done it. Maine has done it. There's a big growing number of states that have recognized that the Census Bureau just gets it wrong. They're wrong on this, and they've decided that they're going to take the Census Bureau data, and before they draw new district lines, they're going to reallocate incarcerated people back to their home communities. They're going to count them at their home addresses, so that when they draw those new district boundaries, they're an accurate reflection of where incarcerated people actually come from. They're an accurate reflection of the actual population of the state, and that everyone gets an equal voice in their government. Some people don't get a louder voice at the expense of everyone else. So that's what we hope that Oregon will do. There was a bill introduced in the legislative session that had a hearing. Unfortunately, it didn't make the deadlines to pass into law, but we think there's momentum there, and we think that Oregon should finish the job of addressing this problem, counting people actually in their home communities, and giving folks an equal voice in government.
MICHAEL DUNNE: I would imagine, advocating on behalf of a population like incarcerated people. Sometimes that's tough. We’ve become this mass incarceration nation really on a lot of rhetoric about wanting to lock up all the bad people and keep us all safe. But, you know, you've already done this a little bit. But maybe for the last question, just to kind of make the case for it's not necessarily about, if I'm hearing you right, it's not necessarily about trying to help those incarcerated. It's that we as a citizenry are being adversely impacted by prison gerrymandering.
MIKE WESSLER: That's 100% accurate. You know, the helpful way to think about prison gerrymandering is, it's a problem where a tiny number of districts in the state in Oregon, it's really one district, one State House District in particular, really benefits from having prisons. Every other district that doesn't contain a prison or a large jail is losing out in this flawed way of counting incarcerated people. So, it's a way that incarceration, mass incarceration in Oregon, is silencing the voices of not just the communities that have high incarceration, or not just the people who are incarcerated, but the entire communities, every single community, as somebody who is in prison, far away from home. Each of those communities is losing out. So the vast majority of Oregon residents are dramatically losing out because of prison gerrymandering. It's just one district in particular that's really benefiting. There's a few others that have smaller deviations that are benefiting slightly, but it's one district in particular that's benefiting at the expense of every other Oregon resident.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Mike Wessler, the communications director for the Prison Policy Initiative, really appreciates you coming on and educating us on this issue.
MIKE WESSLER: Absolutely happy to be here. Thank you for giving me a chance to talk about it.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Since the 2024 election, Democrats have been doing a lot of introspection and even finger pointing. Well, we wanted to find out what local Democrats think. So. I recently visited with the Lane County Democrats at their regular informal gathering they have at a downtown Eugene restaurant to hear what they have to say about where the party is, how its leaders are doing to combat the Trump administration, and what their prospects are for the midterms.
Tell me your name.
MARY ANN PETERSEN: Marianne Peterson.
MICHAEL DUNNE: I want to ask you your opinion on how you know the local, state and the national Democratic Party is doing to both strengthen its policies, but also to counter what's happening from the White House and the Trump administration.
MARY ANN PETERSEN: Well, it's a broad question, but I mostly pay attention to statewide and Lane County politics, and I'm actually pleased with our elected officials, and it's really easy to know what they're doing by just going to their website and getting their newsletter, and then we can actually know what they're doing, rather than trying to wait around and hear it in the news.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Do you like I know, for example, a lot of our local officials, as well as our federal officials, do a lot of town halls and District stuff. Do you find that those types of meetings are very informative, but also, are they a way to kind of express opinions, talk to local, state and federal leaders about how things are going from the perspective of a citizen?
MARY ANN PETERSEN: I think the town hall events are great, and I think they really bring people together, and they get a chance to express their concerns, their fears, their frustrations, their hope. It's a great venue. And I think Oregon actually features some of our elected people who are the few people even to do town halls across the nation.
MICHAEL DUNNE: We have both of our senators, Merkley and Widen who do a lot of town halls. I don't know if you bend any of their town halls, but obviously they're the ones that are sort of there in DC, as well as our congressional delegate delegations. What are some of the things that they've told you about their efforts to try and counter what's happening out of the White House? Do you feel as if they are doing what they need to do to be representative of the minority party?
MARY ANN PETERSEN: I think they are doing a lot of what we need them to do. I think we're in a very strange time right now, and I think that we need to not really overlook. We've got an administration that's breaking laws daily, that's taking away health care funding for cancer research, for children, hunger help or food for hungry families. How do you counter all that? It's not a simple one-day event. This is a long, ongoing process, and just going against the administration on a regular basis, and inspiring others to do so is really important.
MICHAEL DUNNE: There's been a lot of talk and a lot of you know, evidence about the fact that that media has been hollowed out. There's been a lot of newspaper closings. There's been a lot of, you know, just, media organizations that have gone bankrupt and gone away here in Oregon and whatnot. How do you feel that the local, state and national media is doing to provide the facts and provide you with information about what's happening? Do you give them a grade? What might it be?
MARY ANN PETERSEN: Well, for Public Broadcasting, I give them an A Thank you, because I actually notice what's happening locally. I don't see that; I turn on my FM radio. I hear about like, card car dealership specials, I mean, and that's not even ad they're just yakking. So, I really love public broadcasting, and that's really important to support right now, I think generally, and I have a journalism degree, I think that journalism is has been pretty weak, encountering and finding effects, getting to the facts and stay sticking with them, and staying strong and not just selling out.
MICHAEL DUNNE: I noticed you're wearing a No Kings pin. I wanted to ask you, how do you think that the protests locally, as well as nationally? Do you think they're having an impact in terms of not only getting messages out, but perhaps even, you know, kind of turning public opinion?
MARY ANN PETERSEN: I think they're a healthy thing to be doing and a great thing to see, and it is inspiring. And people see numbers, and they see each other in the crowd. So, we should keep doing them. For sure. We need everybody to do everything right now. And that doesn't just mean Democrats. That means anybody who's not happy with this administration, which is a lot of people, needs to get out and do something. Even small things make a difference even just talking to your neighbors, your friends, your coworkers, just staying on top of what we can do daily.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Good enough. Good enough. Thanks. That was our conversation with Mary Ann Petersen with the Lane County Democrats. And we'll bring you more conversations with this group all week. This concludes the show for today, and all episodes of Oregon On The Record are available as a podcast at KLCC.org. After the recent tsunami warning, we're going to check in tomorrow with the Oregon Office of Emergency Management about the risks and the ways we can all stay safe in a tsunami zone. I'm Michael Dunn, and this has been Oregon On The Record from KLCC. Thanks for listening.
