Brenda Wright, an attorney with the public policy group Demos — which backed the lawsuit along with the Prison Policy Initiative — said the the litigation was aimed at getting localities to account for prisoners where it truly counts.
“Our goal is for the incarcerated to be counted, but in the right place — the place that is really their true residence, because you don’t lose your residence by imprisonment,” Wright said.
Wright explained that many inmates at the Cranston facility are there temporarily because they’re awaiting trial or are convicted of misdemeanors, which means they’d be eligible to vote. Yet they aren’t allowed to use Cranston as their address for voting purposes.
