CONUS Carceral Facility Census

An independently built, evidence-graded census of facilities in thelower 48 US states and DC that hold people in custody against theirwill, overnight or longer. Every record carries one of five evidencegrades stating how its existence is known, from named on a governmentroster down to inferred from a name alone. The grades are nevercollapsed into a single yes or no. The census counts facilities, neverpeople. This alpha release holds two files. The first combines the publishedcensus with the open HIFLD Prison Boundaries polygons it does notcapture. That makes it a two-way audit of the federal map: 964 censusrecords have no HIFLD polygon within 250 m, and 501 open HIFLD polygonshave no census record within 250 m. The second file is the reviewqueue, published with equal care: records named on rosters but not yetresolved to a place, and captured candidate places that have not yetcleared the evidence bar. Review is ongoing. Many of these will proveto be real facilities; they are listed as under review, not asrejected. This is a work in progress and the deposit says so throughout. Fieldsno independent source attests are left blank rather than guessed, andthe README explains every blank. Later versions extend coverage fromthe full provenance dataset. The same build is browsable as an interactive map athttps://carceralmap.org