Combined, the Abilene universities have more 3,000 students living on campus. Others include counting prison inmates, long-term hospital patients, transients, and residents in other group settings such as nursing homes, and schools and hospitals for people with mental disabilities. The easiest group census to take may be found behind prison walls. The warden usually opts to provide roster information on all inmates in residence on Census Day. Only a few items of personal information are required of each prisoner, including name and date of birth.
Gender is a given in a one-sex prison.
However census information for people in group settings is gathered, it's a valuable asset for local governments because so much state and federal funding is allocated based on overall population and sub-categories of that general population. We need all the population we can show,'' said Scurry County Judge Ricky Fritz, whose county landed the Daniel prison unit in 1989. Abilene City Manager Roy McDaniel wants it known, however, that the institutional populations aren't totally maintenance-free. Abilene provides water, sewage and refuse services to the Robertson and Middleton prison units northeast of town after originally having provided the land, he noted. And lately, he groused, he's heard reports of inmates wasting water at just the time the city's free population is asked to cut back on water use to ride out the drought.