Aging Prison Populations

Student Email: mxb7550

Essay #1

Aging in our state prison populations

During the 1970s, the mandatory sentencing policies have increased the inmate population and prison costs. with the increasing number of inmates who has been considered to be rehabilitated, but they are still growing old on parole and ends up dead in prison which has an affect the effectiveness of the prison system in this country. Most, prisons in the united state of America are struggling to furnish the costly specialized care to the inmates who are suffering from aging-related issues such as dementia.

It is rather unfortunate that over 125,000 inmates in our state prison are age 55 and over. These inmates are suffering from different forms of diseases such as higher

rates of depression, diabetes, hypertension, H.I.V./AIDS and head trauma which enable the inmates to take care of themselves. due to their sickness and aging they are unable to perform their own activities of daily living within the prison system and requires the prisons to hire nursing staff to perform the necessary proper care for inmate instead of transferring them to a skilled care facility where they can get a proper treatment from health care professionals and for a lower costly. for example according to the human rights right watch study which mentioned that, " the cost of providing medical care to elderly inmates is between three to nine times the cast of younger inmates and another study mentioned that, " the yearly average health care cost per prisoner is over $5500, $11000 for the inmates ages 55 to 59 and about $40000 for inmates over 80 years old. For other parts of the country such as in New York, they tend to create specialized cognitively impaired unit which costs the state more than $ 90000 per bed per year which is more than the cost of the general population with the prison system.
Given these risk factors of dementia and other diseases within the elderly prison population growing in numbers one should had thought that, rather than spending a lot of money on an inmate requiring special treatments within the prison wall. the states should look for different other ways to help this elderly inmate that are never going to be released due to their crimes committed, but on the other hand, the prison system in different states pursue other avenues by partnerships between the prisons and nursing homes to get better needed quality of care. But before the prisons system considered an inmate for the compassionate release programs they should first have to determine if the inmate does not poses any threats to public safety. For example, revisit the mandatory sentencing policies that did away with the judicial discretion and which can filled the prisons bursting in the first place.