Should the Census count boarding school students at their parents’ addresses or at their schools? Where should it count military personnel deployed overseas? To determine where to count people with atypical living situations, the Census Bureau relies on its “usual residence rule,” which instructs that people be counted where they “live and sleep most of the time.” However, application of the rule isn’t entirely consistent. While the Bureau treats boarding school students and deployed military members as residents of their home addresses (despite being away from those addresses for long periods of time), it counts incarcerated people away from their homes, as residents of the correctional facilities where they are detained. This discrepancy persists despite the fact that many incarcerated people are away from home for shorter periods than are boarding school students or deployed military personnel — and despite the fact that many people in jails and prisons do not actually live and sleep most of the time at the place where they happen to be detained on Census Day.

Consider our nation’s jails, where approximately 30% of incarcerated people are held in the United States on any given day. The American Jail Association has reported that 75% of people entering U.S. jails are released within 72 hours. Likewise, in 2019, the average stay for someone in jail was 26 days. (Importantly, there is no national figure on the median time served in jails, but it is likely far shorter than 26 days, given that many people spend only hours or a few days in jail, and because averages can be heavily skewed by the small number of people who remain there for long periods.)

Read the full article about being incarcerated on Census Day by Ginger Jackson-Gleich at Prison Policy Initiative.