Importance Of Keeping The Elderly In Prison

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ELDERLY: SHOULD THEY SUFFER IN PRISON OR SIMPLY BE RELEASED?
Karenna Cruz
American Public University System

This paper will explore the question of if the elderly imprisoned and in deteriorating health should reside in prison or be released. Should the government continue to house and pay the expenses of keeping the elderly incarcerated, or should they be released if they are simply near the end of their life and are unable to commit any further crimes?

The Concerns of Keeping Imprisoned Elderly Offenders Today, there are prisons across the United States of which house elderly inmates who can barely walk, talk, and function within their daily life without the help of prison employees or volunteers. Some elderly inmates cannot even remember the crimes they have committed due to developing dementia. Should these types of offenders really be forced to stay within the prison system and cost the states
For example, in Oklahoma, prisons are usually on lockdown due to the lack of enough officers to secure the prisons. The staffing is at only seventy five percent putting prisons on what is called a warehouse mode. This means that inmates are stored with minimum or no rehabilitation efforts. Within Oklahoma, paroles have no choice but to be deigned off by the government if they are to be set free into the community again. Because finances re so limited within these prisons, they were forced to come up with an alternative. A low cost solution that they have come up with is to have other prison inmates trained to be orderly’s to work in the infirmary. This allows these inmates to help in providing care for the sick and elderly patients within the prison. It is researched and studied and only about one in every three elderly inmates, return to

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