Sponsors (13)
The bill shifts incarcerated people to being counted at their pre‑incarceration home addresses to improve representational equity and reduce perverse incentives to site prisons, while reducing political power and some population‑based funding for prison‑hosting localities and imposing administrative transition costs.
Residents and state/local governments: incarcerated people will be attributed to their pre‑incarceration home addresses for redistricting, producing more accurate population counts and fairer legislative districts.
Urban and racial/ethnic minority communities: neighborhoods that lost population to nearby prisons will regain representation and political clout because formerly incarcerated residents will be counted at home.
Rural communities and local governments: reduces the incentive for jurisdictions to site prisons to inflate population counts, encouraging fairer allocation of federal and state funds based on true resident population.
Prison-hosting localities and the states that represent them: may lose legislative seats or political influence in redistricting when incarcerated people are no longer counted at the prison location.
Local governments that host prisons: could see reduced federal and state funding tied to population counts, potentially shrinking budgets for services and infrastructure.
State governments and the U.S. Census Bureau: implementing the residence-at-home approach requires updates to Census processing and redistricting procedures, creating administrative costs and transition complexity before and after 2030.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Starting with the 2030 Census, incarcerated people are counted at their last usual residence before incarceration and states must use those pre-incarceration addresses for congressional redistricting.
Requires the Census Bureau beginning with the 2030 decennial census to count incarcerated people at their last usual residence before incarceration rather than at the location of the prison or detention facility. It also clarifies that when a State’s apportionment uses incarcerated persons counted under the current Federal residence rule, the State must treat each incarcerated person’s pre-incarceration residence as their residence for congressional redistricting purposes.
Official title: To amend title 13, United States Code, to provide that individuals in prison shall, for the purposes of a decennial census, be attributed to the last usual place of residence before incarceration, and for other purposes.
Introduced February 4, 2026 by Deborah K. Ross · Last progress February 4, 2026