2010 Group Quarters Shapefile

To make the Census Bureau's Advance Group Quarters Summary File easier for redistricting professionals and advocates to use, the Prison Policy Initiative contracted with demographer and redistricting consultant Bill Cooper to produce a point shapefile with the group quarters counts for each block in the country.

The shapefile can be accessed here and a description of each field is below.

Please note that each block that contains a correctional facility contains a link to that block's entry in our database of annotations and that we accept additional annotations via that same link.

GEOID

This 15 digit code is the ANSI code (formerly FIPS) for each block in the country.

STATE

This is the 2 digit ANSI code for the state.

COUNTY

This is the 3 digit ANSI code for the county.

PLACE

This is the FIPS code from the .geo file in the Advance Group Quarters Summary File for the Census "place" the block is within. Places include unincorporated census designated places as well as towns, cities, etc.

CD

This is the congressional district the block was in as of the 2010 Census, prior to the subsequent redistricting.

SLDU

This is the upper chamber state legislative district the block was in as of the 2010 Census, prior to the subsequent redistricting.

SLDL

This is the lower chamber state legislative district the block was in as of the 2010 Census, prior to the subsequent redistricting.

SDELM

This is the elementary school district the block was in as of the 2010 Census, prior to any subsequent redistricting.

SDSEC

This is the secondary school district the block was in as of the 2010 Census, prior to any subsequent redistricting.

SDUNI

This is the unified school district the block was in as of the 2010 Census, prior to any subsequent redistricting.

LAT

This is the latitude of the centroid of the block.

LON

This is the longitude of the centroid of the block.

VTDCODE

Where available, this is the numeric code for the voting district that the block is within, as identified by the state to the Census Bureau prior to the 2010 Census. This code is from the PL94-171 file

GQ

Population in group quarters - all

QGI

Population in institutionalized group quarters - all

QGIJ

Population in institutionalized group quarters - juvenile

QGIC

Population in institutionalized group quarters - correctional facilities

QGINH

Population in institutionalized group quarters - nursing homes

QGIO

Population in other institutionalized group quarters - other

GQNI

Population in non-institutionalized group quarters - all

GQNICD

Population in non-institutionalized group quarters - college dorms

GQNIMQ

Population in non-institutionalized group quarters - military quarters

GQNIO

Population in non-institutionalized group quarters - other

POP

This is the number of people in the block, from the PL94-171 file.

MINORITY

This is an aggregated value of all people in the PL94-171 file who are any race and ethnicity other than non-Hispanic single race white.

POP18

This is the number of people age 18 or over, from the PL94-171 file.

MINORITY18

This is an aggregated value of the number of people 18 years or older in the PL94-171 file who are any race and ethnicity other than non-Hispanic single race white.

HU_OCC

Number of occupied housing units, from the PL94-171 file.

URL_FILE

Any block that contains a population counted in a correctional facility includes a URL to that block's entry in the Prison Policy Initiative's database of annotations of facilities. This database is being constantly updated with additional demographic data and facility identifications, and can accept suggestions and corrections from users. We recommend accessing this database from the web or via HTML PopUps in ArcGIS rather than importing it directly into your local database.