By Mark Bennett
Terre Haute is growing, thanks in part to a group of people who just can’t say goodbye to this place.
Literally.
This month, the U.S. Census Bureau released its 2008 population estimates for American cities, and Terre Haute weighed in at a seemingly robust 60,007. The city hasn’t officially topped 60,000 since 1980.
I know, I know — what about all the plant closings and job losses of recent years? And what about those bleak Census statistics from a few years ago, when Vigo County had the state’s largest population drop in the first half of this decade?
Those all were real. But so was the opening of a third prison at the Federal Correctional Complex on the city’s southwest side in the spring of 2005. That addition of a new, maximum-security facility arrived just months after the Census Bureau estimated Terre Haute’s population had dwindled to 57,663 in 2004. Since then, the city’s headcount — which includes inmates incarcerated here, according to centuries-old U.S. Census rules — gradually has climbed.
The population rise following the prison’s debut isn’t a coincidence. Yet it also doesn’t fully account for the statistical growth.
From 2004 to 2008, the number of people living in Terre Haute has risen by 2,344. Meanwhile, the total inmate population at the Federal Correctional Complex’s three-prison site has increased by 1,754 since its third facility opened four years ago. Of those 1,754 new, confined city residents, 1,645 are housed in that third prison. (The older, medium-security prison has 1,334 inmates, while 456 are held in the minimum-security camp.)
Even so, the city population has added another 590 residents, who aren’t behind bars, since 2004.
Without speculating on causes for Terre Haute’s boost, Matt Kinghorn of the Indiana Business Research Center called the overall growth “pretty impressive.” A prison expansion could distort that increase, he cautioned.
But the bottom-line number may be all that matters.
“That tells people something, without even looking at the details,” said Duke Bennett, Terre Haute’s mayor.
It’s like Rod Carew’s lifetime batting average. The former Twins and Angels Hall of Famer finished with a dazzling .328 career average. Lots of Carew’s 3,053 base hits included bunts and infield grounders on which he used his foot speed to beat the opponents’ throws to first base. In 1972, he led the American League with a .318 average without hitting a single home run.
Is Carew’s .328 lifetime mark any less legitimate than the .334 career average of current Cardinals slugger Albert Pujols, who’s homered 351 times? No. Carew and Pujols used different assets to do the same thing — get on base, and get runs for their teams.
Likewise, if prisoners count as residents of the communities where they’re serving time, then Terre Haute is a legitimate 60,000-population town. The inmates’ presence directly affects daily life here, and the local economy. The salaries, benefits and operating costs of facilities, such as the maximum-security prison that opened in 2005, total more than $30 million annually, according to Bureau of Prisons figures quoted at its unveiling.
Some advocacy groups want the Census to abandon its practice of counting inmates where they’re locked up, as the U.S. Census enumerators have done since 1790. Critics contend that prisoners should be counted as residents of their most recent, non-institutional address. Otherwise, they say, Census figures paint a distorted demographic picture of small, prison towns, and shortchange urban areas (where a majority of inmates once lived) in the allocation of federal funds and congressional representation.
Maybe so. Nonetheless, the rule that’s stood for nearly 220 years still will be the rule when the next official decennial Census is conducted in 2010, the Bureau says.
Besides, Terre Haute seems to have grown, ever so modestly, around its latest prison addition. Those extra 590 residents matter to the local school district, businesses, churches and organizations.
There are 12 Indiana cities with populations of 60,000 or more, now that Terre Haute has rejoined that group. Half of those cities lost residents from 2007 to 2008; Terre Haute grew by 201 people in that span, which was three years after the new prison opened.
“That’s a tremendous harbinger, I’d say,” said Andrew Conner of Downtown Terre Haute Inc.
“To see the numbers go up, that’s a really positive thing,” Mayor Bennett said. “Next year’s Census is the one that counts the most, though.”
Indeed, next April’s enumeration is the official Census that determines how much federal money cities should get, and where congressional districts are drawn. Some unpredictable variables could knock Terre Haute back under 60,000. The percentage of Hauteans responding to the 2000 Census questionnaires was among the state’s worst, and another poor showing could leave the city undercounted again. Also, since that 2008 Census estimate, the southside Pfizer plant and its 800 jobs have disappeared. A number of former Pfizer employees left town, and that could hurt.
On the plus side, Terre Haute can count on its 3,435 federal inmates being counted. Given the existing Census methods, their inclusion in the statistical snapshot of this community is a reality, not a distortion. This town lives with the risks and benefits that come with the prisons, and if their numbers give Terre Haute extra clout and resources, good for us.
Mark Bennett can be reached at (812) 231-4377 or mark.bennett@tribstar.com.
