Would it really cost the Census $250 million to count incarcerated people at home?
That is extremely unlikely. (The Maryland Department of Legislative Services, for example, estimates the cost of counting incarcerated people at their residential address to about $1.60 per prisoner, that would be about $4.2 million for the whole US prison population.) That figure comes from a report the Census Bureau prepared for Congress in 2006: Tabulating Prisoners at Their “Permanent Home of Record” Address. Congress asked the Bureau for its opinion on changing the prison count, and rather than describe the problem and ask for helped resolving it. The Bureau threw up a smokescreen. The New York Times was blunt: The Census Bureau tends to stamp its feet and shake its head no when asked to do things differently than it has in the past. The editorial board neatly summarized the Bureau’s report as obtuse and evasive. The $250 million figure is the most often cited piece of the report, but the Bureau provides no breakdown of the costs. Worse, in the interest of stopping reform, the Bur
