Requires state use actual residences of persons in government custody for redistricting purposes. Information would be collected by the department of corrections and forwarded to the division of statewide planning, to be utilized for redistricting.

Plain-English Summary

This bill addresses how people who are incarcerated are counted when drawing political districts in Rhode Island. Currently, when legislative maps are redrawn (a process called redistricting), incarcerated people are typically counted as residents of the location where they are imprisoned, even if they come from a different community. This bill would change that practice by requiring the state to use each incarcerated person's actual home address — where they lived before being incarcerated — when determining population counts for redistricting.

To make this work, the Department of Corrections would be responsible for collecting home address information from people in state custody and sharing that data with the Division of Statewide Planning, which is the agency that handles redistricting. The goal is to ensure that political representation reflects where people actually come from, rather than where they happen to be held.

This bill would primarily affect two groups of communities. First, it would reduce the population counts assigned to areas where prisons and correctional facilities are located, which could reduce those communities' political representation. Second, it would increase the population counts for communities — often urban areas — where incarcerated people originally lived, which could give those communities slightly more political representation. The concept behind this approach is sometimes called "prison gerrymandering" reform, and several other states have adopted similar policies. The bill is currently in committee and has been scheduled for further review.