{"id":6281,"date":"2012-08-23T12:11:57","date_gmt":"2012-08-23T16:11:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/?p=6281"},"modified":"2015-06-17T14:12:09","modified_gmt":"2015-06-17T18:12:09","slug":"urban-criteria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/2012\/08\/23\/urban-criteria\/","title":{"rendered":"Census Bureau Updates Definition of \u201cUrban\u201d to Prevent Prisons from Denying Rural Communities an Accurate Label"},"content":{"rendered":"

About three miles north of Calipatria, California, the state of California operates the Calipatria State Prison. Based upon the 2000 census, the United States Census Bureau classified \u201cCalipatria North, California\u201d as an \u201cUrban Cluster\u201d<\/a> with a population of 3,176. But is a piece of land containing a prison on a dusty piece of highway really an urban area? I don\u2019t think so, and the Census Bureau doesn\u2019t think so either. Anymore.<\/p>\n

\"illustration <\/p>\n

Recently, the Census Bureau released the list of \u201cUrbanized Areas\u201d and \u201cUrban Clusters\u201d<\/a> that were classified as urban based on the 2010 census data. This new list incorporated a quirky but important change that the Census Bureau finalized in 2011. Specifically, the Census Bureau no longer labels an area \u201curban\u201d if the majority of the population counted there is institutionalized in a prison, mental hospital or similar group quarters facility.<\/span><\/p>\n

I discovered this quirk \u2013 and the pending change \u2013 during my Alternative Spring Break internship<\/a> at the Prison Policy Initiative last year. I was investigating an Arkansas highway funding formula that, in part, gave extra funding to counties that had a large portion of their population classified as \u201crural.\u201d This formula made a lot of sense, as rural populations are more spread out, so there would presumably be more roads per capita to maintain. Unfortunately for rural Arkansas counties, classifying prisons as \u201curban\u201d made the counties that hosted prisons seem more urban than they actually were.<\/p>\n

While most of our work at Prison Policy Initiative addresses prison-based gerrymandering<\/a>, this urban classification problem is just one of many examples<\/a> we\u2019ve come across of how the Census Bureau\u2019s policy of counting incarcerated persons at the location of prisons can distort governmental decision-making that relies on accurate portrayals of communities.<\/p>\n

To the Census Bureau\u2019s credit, it changed the way it classifies areas as \u201cUrban Clusters\u201d to avoid this problem. In reviewing the 2000 data, the Census Bureau acknowledged that twenty-four \u201cUrban Clusters\u201d from the 2000 census data were comprised \u201centirely or predominantly\u201d of residents in institutional group quarters (cite: 75 FR 52178-79). Realizing that such areas \u201clack most of the residential, commercial, and infrastructure characteristics typically associated with urban territory,\u201d the Census Bureau proposed that an Urban Cluster meet two requirements: that the area contain at least 2,500 people and that at least 1,500 of those persons be outside of institutional group quarters. In 2011, the Census Bureau finalized this proposal, and reiterated that persons counted in institutional group quarters lack the residential and commercial characteristics associated with the surrounding community (cite: 76 FR 53036). In other words, it\u2019s a mistake to classify big prisons in the same way as urban communities.<\/p>\n

While this an admittedly minor rule change, the Census Bureau\u2019s rationale for the change is noteworthy. The Census Bureau acknowledged that institutional group quarters populations, many of which are incarcerated, lack sufficient connections to the surrounding community to justify their unrestricted use for census data purposes. Moreover, the Census Bureau implemented a reasonable correction to this particular problem caused by counting incarcerated persons as residents of the prisons in which they are incarcerated.<\/p>\n

We should take heart from the fact that the Census Bureau is slowly but surely acknowledging and ameliorating the distorting effects caused by its policy of counting incarcerated persons at the location of prisons, rather than at their home addresses. The next logical step would be for the Census Bureau to review how it counts prison populations for data used in redistricting.<\/span> It\u2019s in the redistricting context that the Census Bureau\u2019s prison miscount has the most severe implications<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is a piece of land containing a prison on a dusty piece of highway really an urban area? The Census Bureau doesn\u2019t think so. Anymore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[37],"class_list":["post-6281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6281","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\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6281\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6281"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonersofthecensus.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=6281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}