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Are Geriatric Jailbirds Getting Better Health Care Than Mom?

You know the case. Forty-one years after the 1964 murders of three civil rights workers in Mississippi, former preacher and Klan Kleagle Edgar Ray Killen was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to three twenty-year prison terms. Finally, the victims and their families received a measure of long-overdue justice. Killen should have been convicted at the original trial in 1967.

But that begs the question: while vindication and punishment are vital, who is really bearing the brunt of keeping the now 82-year-old Killen—frail, evil, balding and with little to no use of his right hand—in prison?

The answer, dear readers: we are.

In 2002, America’s prison population topped 2 million, according to a report from the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics. Researchers at the San Francisco VA Medical center projected that one third of the U.S. prison population will be geriatric (people over 65) by 2030. Part of the jump is the result of aging baby boomers. The increasing numbers of elderly prisoners coupled with the mounting costs of housing this population incurs is a nationwide problem—for several reasons.

Taxpayers Foot the Bill

The average cost of housing one elderly inmate is approximately $65,000 per year—costing taxpayers three times as much as it does to incarcerate someone in the general prison population. Incarcerated seniors do not receive Social Security, nor do they have access to Medicare or Medicaid, which would help the government—and taxpayers—augment care costs.

Geriatric jailbirds suffer from, on average, three chronic health problems. According to the Florida Corrections Commission, these problems often include kidney failure, heart disease, diabetes, emphysema and stroke. As senior inmates have a higher incidence of disease and disability, and increased difficulty performing activities of daily living than the general population, it is no surprise that the cost of their health care is higher.

“It’s a hidden problem in the system that’s going to grow into a dinosaur soon. The cost and numbers are getting out of hand,” said Herb Hoetler, CEO and co-founder of the National Institute on Institutions and Alternatives.

I personally think it’s wrong, not to mention fiscally unwise, to continue paying for elderly prisoners’ virtually unlimited access to medical care, while ailing seniors who have never committed a crime can barely afford the soaring costs of health care. Some can’t afford it at all.

Cruel and Unusual?

On the flip side—and there’s always a flip side, my friends—do the elderly even belong in prison? Prison is a brutal life, and while critics will argue that elderly criminals are just as brutal, the statistics say otherwise. Elderly inmates have the lowest recidivism rates: 45 percent of offenders aged 18 to 29 commit a new crime after release from prison, whereas only 3.2 percent of those over age 55 commit a new offense upon release, according to a recent study.

“To keep some of these folks in prison for the length of time we do is purely punitive and serves no purpose to society,” says William DiMascio, executive director of the Pennsylvania Prison Society.

Aging has a big impact on inmates. The idea of “warehousing” elderly inmates with minimal programming appropriate for this population just adds to seniors’ general decline. Round and round we go.

What Should be Done?

As a society, we need to take a good look at the aging prison population and decide what’s going to happen to them. Do we establish early release programs targeting elderly prisoners who no longer pose a threat to society? Or do we build more geriatric prisons—which are essentially skilled nursing facilities with barbed wire—to provide the long-term care these inmates require?

Or...do we lock them up and throw away the key?

Food for thought—

Ami Icanberry

Posted in: Editorials

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