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 changes how Rhode Island counts incarcerated people when drawing political district maps. Currently, when the state redraws district boundaries (a process called redistricting), people in prison or jail are typically counted as residents of the location where they are incarcerated, even if they came from somewhere else. This bill would require the state to instead count them as residents of wherever they actually lived before they were locked up.

Under this bill, the Department of Corrections would be responsible for collecting information about where incarcerated individuals actually lived before entering custody. That information would then be passed along to the Division of Statewide Planning, which uses population data to draw the boundary lines for legislative and other political districts.

This bill primarily affects two groups of people: incarcerated individuals and the communities where they lived before incarceration. Communities that host prisons or jails could see their population counts decrease for redistricting purposes, potentially reducing their political representation. On the other hand, communities — often urban areas — that incarcerated people came from could see their population counts increase, potentially gaining more political representation. The bill does not change anything about voting rights for incarcerated individuals; it only affects how they are counted for the purpose of drawing district maps.

The bill has been introduced in the Rhode Island Senate and referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee, with a hearing scheduled for April 2026.