There is a quirk in the census numbers that needs to be fixed. It seems that many rural counties, both here in Texas and across the nation, are getting credit for thousands of prisoners that actually don't live in the county. They are prisoners in state prisons and state jails. And in a state like Texas, that can be a significant number of miscounted persons.
I say miscounted because the inmates of state prisons and state jails are counted as residents of the county in which their prison unit is located. Here in Texas, that amounts to over 155,000 people. Since most prisons are located in rural counties away from urban areas, that means those rural counties get a population bump in the census by counting those prisoners.
The problem is that nearly all of those prisoners will never live in the county in which they are counted as residing. They will return to their original county of residence when they are released, and the huge majority of them will be released back to urban areas.
So what's the problem with that? The problem is that things like federal funds (and state funds) are distributed according to the census population -- things like social service money and law enforcement funds. The urban counties are getting short-changed by this. They are the counties that will have to provide social services to the released prisoners, and they are the counties that will have to deal with the prisoners if they break the law again.
But the money is going to rural counties who will never have to deal with these prisoners after their release. This miscount also pads the population roles of rural counties when it comes to things like redistricting. The rural counties get more representation than they deserve and the urban counties get short-changed by getting less representation than they deserve.
This is not a problem to fix, but it will require a change in state law. A new law needs to be passed that says prisoners will be counted in the county in which they are convicted. The prison system has these records and could easily provide the information to the U.S. Census workers.
The current system is unfair. The prisoners should be counted in their county of conviction, because that is highly likely where they will be released to, and where the money to help them should be distributed. Continuing the current system is just unfair.
This is surprising to many, but our research has shown that the Census Bureau's prison miscount has very little impact on funding formulas, although the impact on the redistricting process is indeed huge.
ReplyDeleteMost federal formula grants are block grants to states (and most prisoners do not cross state lines) and the rest tend to be very narrowly tailored programs that are too smart to be fooled by where prisoners are counted. State programs vary, but in Texas its easy because the state moves very little money around.
With a minor tweak, you are right about the solution, though. Ideally, the Census Bureau would decide to count people in prison as residents of their home addresses. Currently, though, the Census Bureau would not accept home addresses if they were provided, but the state can go and collect their own home addresses and prepare to adjust the federal census when it arrives. That is what Maryland is going to do.
For more of our Texas research on the political impact, see the Texas page on PrisonersoftheCensus. A lot of our research on how funding works is in the blog on the site.