Hello all,
I am an academic researcher with a tall task: I'm looking to construct a database linking enumeration district identifiers to the names of all correctional institutions in the country, preferably for the decadal census years of 1880 and 1900-1940, with 1910 being of primary interest. I first must ask if anyone is aware of such a dataset existing already? I have not found one yet.
I do believe I understand how one may be constructed; to my knowledge, correctional institutions are supposed to have their own enumeration district. The excellent resources concerning enumeration district descriptions, accessible at stevemorse.org, have been a great help in initial research. It appears as though, since they are large and there aren't very many, state prisons should mostly be easily identifiable using enumeration district descriptions and a little legwork, but I believe this information will need to be supplemented with some other information or technique of which I am currently not aware to obtain smaller institutions.
This is because, in the records that list the correctional institutions in the country (see table 1 of this document for 1910, for instance, usa.ipums.org/.../03322287no121-130ch01.pdf) there are numerous county and city jails that do not appear in the descriptions of the enumeration districts. For instance, none of the ED descriptions for Autauga County, AL mention any sort of correctional institution in Prattville (where the 1910 prison source lists as the location for the Autauga county jail). Manually reviewing enumerators' worksheets or enumeration maps, again with the help of the tools at stevemorse.org, might provide the missing link in identifying the enumeration district numbers for institutions, but this would presumably be almost incredibly tedious.
Does anyone have suggestions about how to go about this and/or other extant data sources of which I should be aware? All help would be greatly appreciated.
