Great piece in the Times Herald-Record today on the debate over how New York State should count prisoners. Currently, they're counted where they're imprisoned, not where they're originally from, a practice that artificially inflates upstate districts with large prisons and gives a boost to the GOP in the state legislature.
The story serves up some local numbers:
Most of the state's prisons are well outside New York City, yet 50 percent of the state's prisoners are from New York. In the eight state prisons in Orange, Sullivan and Ulster counties, 69 percent of prisoners are from New York. The percentage of local prisoners? Four percent.
Republican state senator John Bonacic says he's not opposed to eliminating prisoners from upstate counts--as long as the state reforms how college students and second homeowners are counted, too.
"If you want to resolve the residence issue, do it for everybody," Bonacic says.
