At the Vienna Correctional Center here, deep in southern Illinois, clipboard-wielding guards count the inmates six times a day.
But no count matters more to the prison and the rest of Johnson County than the U.S. Census, the results of which can translate into a wide range of population and poverty-based federal and state cash.
In the peculiar calculus of census politics, the prison populations of Vienna and nearby Shawnee Correctional Center add 2,955 meagerly paid residents to the county’s rolls, fully a quarter of its population.
That, state officials estimate, translates into about $1.5 million a year in government assistance–an amount equivalent to almost half the $3.4 million budget spent each year by the county.
“They’re blessed to have us down here,” said Jermaine Johnson, a 25-year-old convicted drug dealer from Chicago’s North Side and temporary Johnson County resident at Vienna.
Counting felons is only one of the creative methods employed by state and local governments to maximize their take from government largess keyed to the nation’s decennial tally, which is currently under way. No pocket of the population is too narrow or too obscure to ignore.
Landlocked states are pushing for sailors to be counted as members of their home states, while port cities like Norfolk, Va., are lobbying to keep those sailors counted where boats are docked.
Officials from chilly Midwestern states are scrambling to contact thousands of retirees who flock to Florida and Arizona in the winter, reminding them to remember their roots when filling out census forms.
In Chicago, city officials even tried to get the 112 members of the Ringling Brothers Kaleidoscape circus counted because they happened to be performing at Soldier Field last week.
Circus folk, like horse-track personnel, RV travelers and others perpetually on the move, are typically counted wherever they happen to be on March 31, a special census counting day known as Transient Night.
“The circus is in town, which is good for us,” said Don Davis, Chicago’s census coordinator.
Chicago also has gone after corporate commuters who spend weeknights in the city and weekends elsewhere. Targeting that group, the city sent 2,400 fliers to 16 apartment complexes citywide that cater to business commuters.
“If they sleep here most of the time, even if they may consider themselves from somewhere else, we want them to know the residency rules,” Davis said, citing Census Bureau guidelines that define home as where a person lives and sleeps most of the time, not necessarily their legal or voting residence.
For commuters, that means the place where they spend “most of the week.” For college students, it means their campus, not their parents’ home.
While the guidelines are clear for those scenarios, they allow some flexibility, and in turn, some room for gentle persuasion.
No one is admitting to poaching, but municipalities and states are asking to be remembered. They’ve contacted residents out of state, urging them to read the rules, but stopping short of snaring them outright from other states.
“It’s all been very much aboveboard,” said Barbara Ronningen, a census promoter in Minnesota who helped organize the distribution of 2,000 information cards and 3,000 pencils at a recent picnic in Mesa, Ariz., for Minnesota natives.
“If they consider their usual residence in Minnesota, they should answer it (that way),” she said. “We want them to answer it correctly. So if they really consider Arizona their residence, so be it.”
Most snow birds stay in the warmth between two and six months, meaning the choice may not have been easy on census day.
Along with Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and the Canadian province of Manitoba, Minnesota produces one of the largest segments of the 300,000 people who spend winters in Arizona, according to the Arizona Winter Visitors Association.
But prisoners, not exactly mobile, may be the most easily identified and lucrative targets in the census game.
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Many towns in Illinois, for instance, have annexed nearby prisons so they can capture more government funds.
Illinois’ newest prison, still under construction in the Mississippi River town of Thomson, will more than quadruple the town’s present population of 538 people. The town won’t be changing its population sign, but after a special census conducted once prisoners move in next year, the new resident inmates will boost Thomson’s annual take from state programs alone by more than $180,000.
“A lot of factories in our area are cutting back,” said Thomson Mayor Merrie Jo Enloe, a junior high school math and science teacher. “People are losing their jobs, so we’re hoping we’ll be able to provide a place for them to work.”
State officials aren’t shy about the benefits of counting prisoners. In fact, it’s part of the pitch made to prospective prison sites. After all, the inmates increase government aid for everything from indigent medical care to energy assistance to revenue sharing.
All this even though the prisoners, who by definition are not out and about, aren’t putting any added strain on municipal services such as police or street repairs.
“It’s one of the sidebar selling points of a prison, especially if the community is small,” said Nic Howell, spokesman for the Illinois Department of Corrections. “If it’s a small community, you can really make out.”
That’s so true that Arizona last year passed a law–good only until February–that expands the ability of communities to annex prisons. The provision set off a battle between the towns of Gila and Buckeye for a neighboring correctional center.
Buckeye won, and has since added roughly 2,000 inmates to its regular population of 5,600, according to town manager Joe Blanton.
“It’s sitting out in the middle of nowhere. And we got it,” Blanton said of the prison, which is expected to bring $285 per inmate in new government revenue following this year’s count. “The deadline (for this census) was Dec. 31, and I think we annexed it finally on Dec. 28.”
Prison towns new and old are not the only ones seeing gold behind bars.
For several years, Wisconsin has housed a growing number of convicts out of state. But come census time, that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be counted as Wisconsinites, argues U.S. Rep. Mark Green (R-Wis.).
“They have to come back to Wisconsin to finish their sentences; we’re paying the cost for them; we’re liable for them; and they began in Wisconsin,” said Green, who wants Congress to pass legislation that would count prisoners in their state of origin. “I think there is a very serious logical argument on our side here.”
Current rules count prisoners where they are housed on April 1.
In some states, census enumerators actually go into the prisons to count inmates. Illinois has opted to provide census officials with administrative records verifying its prisoners.
Another Wisconsin congressman, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), is pushing another plan to change counting rules. Ryan wants military personnel based in the United States to be counted in their “home of record,” rather than their place of assignment.
“If you’re a Wisconsinite, you pay taxes in Wisconsin, you vote in Wisconsin, you should be counted in Wisconsin,” Ryan said, adding that 19,000 military personnel from his state would be affected by the change.
Under current rules, sailors on ships are counted at their onshore homes if they have them, or at their ship’s home port. That policy is held dearly by coastal cities that host naval vessels and their crew for six-month stints or longer. As the providers of fire and police protection, as well as public transportation, to thousands of naval personnel, these cities and their states should receive the census-based funds, officials from those states argue.
“You’ve got traveling salesmen who spend less time and have less impact on their communities than these shipboard people,” said U.S. Rep. Owen Pickett (D-Va.), whose district includes port areas. “What we are trying to do with the census is determine the impact of people on the government process, so this makes sense.”
Still, the whole process leaves some communities puzzled.
Johnson County is no rural Gold Coast but has seen rising property sales and vacation homes along the shores of Lake of Egypt. By contrast, 30 miles to the northeast in Gallatin County, the state’s collapsed coal industry has left all of Gallatin County with just one grocery store, one drugstore and one nursing home.
Yet, according to census figures that count those coveted prisoners, Johnson County ranks last in per capita income among Illinois’ 102 counties. Gallatin County sits at 80th.
“I’m really surprised,” said Jim “Doggie” Poshard, a Gallatin County board member and first cousin to former Congressman Glenn Poshard. “I didn’t know we were in such good shape.”