{"id":8763,"date":"2016-07-12T10:49:26","date_gmt":"2016-07-12T14:49:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/?p=8763"},"modified":"2016-07-12T10:49:26","modified_gmt":"2016-07-12T14:49:26","slug":"comment_4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/2016\/07\/12\/comment_4\/","title":{"rendered":"Census residence rules mean formerly incarcerated Connecticut resident was counted in one town while registered to vote in another"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On July 17, 2015, Ms. Chandra Bozelko <a href=\"\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/letters\/Chandra_Bozelko_FRN_letter.pdf\">submitted a comment letter<\/a> in response to the Census Bureau\u2019s May 20, 2015 Federal Register Notice regarding the 2020 Decennial Census Residence Rule and Residence Situations.<\/p>\n<p>Ms. Bozelko explained that she was formerly incarcerated at the York Correctional Institution in Niantic, Connecticut. Despite remaining registered to vote in her hometown of Orange, Connecticut, the Census Bureau\u2019s residence rule counted her as a resident of the prison in Niantic.<\/p>\n<p>Ms. Bozelko asserts that the Census Bureau\u2019s practice of counting incarcerated persons as \u201cresidents\u201d of their correctional facilities, instead of their hometowns, harms all of Connecticut\u2019s communities \u2013 both those where prisons are located and the home communities that lose their residents to imprisonment. Ms. Bozelko explains: \u201ccounting [her] in one town when [she] was registered in another is a poor example of how we protect a citizen\u2019s most treasured right.\u201d Because \u201c[t]he right to vote is sacred,\u201d Ms. Bozelko urges the Census Bureau to count incarcerated persons as residents of their home addresses \u2013 and not as residents of their prisons\u2019 addresses \u2013 in order to more accurately reflect the population of a given community.<\/p>\n<p>Notwithstanding Ms. Bozelko\u2019s experience and recommendation, the Census Bureau has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.federalregister.gov\/articles\/2016\/06\/30\/2016-15372\/proposed-2020-census-residence-criteria-and-residence-situations\">proposed to maintain its policy<\/a> of counting incarcerated individuals as residents of their prison facilities rather than their home communities.<\/p>\n<p>To learn more about Ms. Bozelko\u2019s leadership as a spokesperson for a Connecticut campaign to reform how incarcerated people are counted by the Census, <a href=\"\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/connecticut.html\">click here<\/a>. To read Ms. Bozelko\u2019s recent op-ed on this issue, <a href=\"http:\/\/ctviewpoints.org\/2016\/04\/01\/prison-gerrymandering-should-end-in-connecticut\/\">visit here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><i>Zack Goldberg, a 3L at Brooklyn Law School, is a 2016 summer intern at the NAACP Legal Defense &#038; Educational Fund, Inc.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Census Bureau\u2019s practice of counting incarcerated persons as \u201cresidents\u201d of their correctional facilities, instead of their hometowns, harms all of Connecticut\u2019s communities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[47],"class_list":["post-8763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8763\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8763"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=8763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}