Almost half the states prisons are in the state Senate districts of four upstate Republicans who, if they could not count inmates, would have to stretch their district lines to encompass more people, setting in motion a ripple effect that eventually would reduce the Republican electorate in competitive districts closer to New York City.
And if those same prison inmates were instead counted in the communities whence they came, the population of urban districts would swell, setting in motion reciprocal ripples that would increase the Democratic electorate in those same competitive districts. Wagner estimates the net effect of changing how prisoners are counted could gain urban Democrats two seats in both the New York House and Senate.
Tilove, supra note 219, at A1.
This [client] has multidimensional legal problems. They have a housing case and they have a criminal case. Wouldnt it be interesting if we actually provided some form of civil representation for them? And then that model is expanded even more by the Vera Institute of Justice in what is called the neighborhood defender model. There is one up in Harlem which explores the idea that people who come to the defender service are of a certain character within a certain area. In other words, they are going to have a certain set of demographic characteristics which are going to cause them to have a whole host of problems that lead them to the criminal justice system; in other words that sense that we all had in law school that a persons legal issue is a very narrow set of problems the person has, and if we just solve that persons case, it is not really going to solve that crisis that they are in at that moment.