Bill that changes how inmates are counted heads to Lamont

Hartford — A bill that would change the way prisoners are counted when Connecticut’s legislative district lines are redrawn heads to Gov. Ned Lamont’s desk.

The proposal received final legislative approval in the Democratic controlled House of Representatives on Wednesday, passing 95-49 along party lines.

Currently, those incarcerated in the state are counted as members of the community in which they are imprisoned. Under this bill, they would instead be counted toward the city and town where they lived before entering prison, which advocates contend would be fairer to those communities.

“There are three districts where about 10% of the population is actually made up of incarcerated people from elsewhere in the state,” said Rep. Jillian Gilchrest, D-West Hartford, who called the legislation “a once in a decade opportunity to make a change for the better” in Connecticut.

Advocates of the legislation noted that most inmates return to their prior communities after serving their sentences. But at least one critic, Rep. Doug Dubitsky, R-Chaplin, called the bill an effort by the majority Democrats to “rig the system.”

“Because that’s what it’s doing,” he said. “It is artificially enhancing a district for the purposes, for the political purpose of assigning representatives for those people who don’t live there, won’t live there and may never live there.”

If Lamont signs the bill into law, Connecticut will become the 11th state to count inmates, for legislative redistricting purposes, as living in the community where their last place of residence was located.