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Aging Inmates Clogging
Nation's Prisons
By Shannon Mccaffrey, USA Today
October 1, 2007
Joe
Williams, a prisoner at the Franck C. Scott, Jr. State Prison in Hardwick,
Ga. during an interview Wed.,
May 23, 2007
. The soaring number of aging inmates is now outpacing the prison growth
as a whole. Williams, 62, said the older inmates stick together.
Razor wire topping the fences seems almost a joke at the Men's State
Prison, where many inmates are slumped in wheelchairs, or leaning on
walkers or canes.
It's becoming an increasingly common sight: geriatric inmates spending
their waning days behind bars. The soaring number of aging inmates is
now outpacing the prison growth as a whole.
Tough sentencing laws passed in the crime-busting 1980s and 1990s are
largely to blame. It's all fueling an explosion in inmate health costs
for cash-strapped states.
"It keeps going up and up," said Alan Adams, director of Health Services
for the Georgia Department of Corrections. "We've got some old guys who
are too sick to get out of bed. And some of them, they're going to die
inside. The courts say we have to provide care and we do. But that costs
money."
Justice Department statistics show that the number of inmates in federal
and state prisons age 55 and older shot up 33 percent from 2000 to 2005,
the most recent year for which the data was available. That's faster
than the 9 percent growth overall.
The trend is particularly pronounced in the South, which has some of the
nation's toughest sentencing laws. In 16 Southern states, the growth
rate has escalated by an average of 145 percent since 1997, according to
the Southern Legislative Conference.
Rising prison health care costs -- particularly for elderly inmates --
helped fuel a 10 percent jump in state prison spending from fiscal year
2005 to 2006, according to the National Conference of State
Legislatures. That growth in spending is projected to continue, the
group said.
The graying of the nation's prisons mirrors the population as whole. But
many inmates arrive in prison after years of unhealthy living, such as
drug use and risky sex. The stress of life behind bars can often make
them even sicker.
And once they enter prison walls, they aren't eligible for Medicaid or
Medicare, where the costs are shared between the state and federal
government, meaning a state shoulders the burden of inmate health care
on its own.
Estimates place the annual cost of housing an inmate at $18,000 to
$31,000 a year. There is no firm separate number for housing an elderly
inmate, but there is widespread agreement that it's significantly higher
than for a younger one.
In addition to medical costs there are other, less obvious expenses. For
instance, elderly inmates can't climb to the top bunk so they sometimes
need to be housed in separate units that require more space.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1976 that inmates have a constitutional
right to health care. But what that means can depend on where an inmate
is locked up.
In Alabama, the Southern Center for Human Rights in 2005 filed a federal
class action lawsuit to force the Hamilton Aged and Infirm Correctional
Facility to improve conditions. Prisoners with serious medical
conditions sometimes had to wait several months or more for treatment at
the overcrowded facility housing frail inmates with dementia and
Alzheimer's, the lawsuit said.
A federal judge in 2006 appointed a receiver to oversee California's
prison system after finding that an average of one inmate a week was
dying of neglect or malpractice. A new report issued by the receiver
found that as many as 66 inmates died last year because of poor medical
care.
State lawmakers have been reluctant to tinker with the tough laws that
are keeping more people in prison for longer sentences. Reacting to
violent crime waves in the 1980s and 1990s, state lawmakers passed two-
and three-strikes laws and abolished parole.
They are now seeing the results of those laws, said Ronald Aday,
professor of aging studies at Middle Tennessee University who has
written a book on aging prisoners.
"This number is going to keep going up and up until they address the
issues that are putting these people there in the first place," Aday
said.
At Men's State Prison in central Georgia, the older inmates stick
together, said Manson Griffin, 66, and Joe Williams, 62.
They rattle off a list of ailments common to men their age: arthritis,
high blood pressure, bad backs. Williams wears a neck brace and walks
with a cane. Both are taking a laundry list of prescription medications.
Still, Griffin said he's in fairly good condition compared with some of
the older inmates at Men's, where the average age is 52 and the oldest
prisoner is 86.
"It's heart-rending to see some of the older people in the condition
they're in," Griffin said. "You have to wonder why they haven't had a
little leniency on them to let them go home?
"What can an 80-year-old man in a wheelchair do? Run?"
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