Prison Cities Cash in on Census 2000
Dateline: 05/01/00
At 4:30 pm on April 3, 2000, officials of California's Folsom State Prison handed out 4,000 Census 2000 questionnaires to prisoners. Three hours later, 3,300 -- 82 percent -- of the census forms had been completed and returned. Not bad compared to a response rate of only 67 percent from California's non-inmate population.
Do cities with prison's benefit from this almost automatic complete response to Census 2000? Yes they do. The census counts prison inmates as residents of the city in which their prison is located. According to an article in the April 30, Sacramento Bee, each prisoner nets their California city about $70 annually in state tax allocations that are paid on a per-resident basis.
Best of all, it's easy money according to Folsom, California Finance Director Dave Sanders who is quoted in the Sacramento Bee as stating "The prisons are self-contained islands that don't really cost us anything," Sanders said. "I don't see a negative side to having them in the community."
Folsom's 7,246 prison inmates bring the city of 54,000 about $500,000 a year in state tax money according to Sanders.
Inmate populations also save the Census Bureau considerable time and expense.
"We handle the census in a couple of different ways," said Margot Bach, spokeswoman for the state Corrections Department. "In some prisons, the inmates are given the forms to fill out themselves. If they refuse, we fill in the blanks."
"In others, the whole thing is handled administratively -- we just turn over the information to the census people."
Reference Links
Cities Counting on Inmate Cencus
From the Sacramento Bee - April 30, 2000
Updated total of inmates listed by federal facility. From the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
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