NJ Spotlight’s Colleen O’Dea Reports

Prison inmates would be counted at their former homes, not where they are incarcerated, when New Jersey redraws its legislative boundaries next year under a bill now poised for final passage by state lawmakers.

Advocates for the change say the existing apportionment system inflates the population of places that host correctional facilities and distorts legislative representation both in those places and in the communities where the inmates lived before being incarcerated. State legislative district boundary lines are redrawn every decade to account for shifts in the population so that each contains roughly the same number of people.