Long Term Care Issues: Old Prisoners Getting Better Health Care?
It has been 41 years after the murder of three civil rights workers in Mississippi way back in 1964, 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 have recieved justice, which was long overdue. 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 have predicted that over 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. The average cost of housing just one elderly inmate is approximately $65,000 every year, costing taxpayers three times as much as it does to incarcerate someone in the general prison population. Senior prisoners do not receive Social Security, nor do they have access to Medicare or Medicaid, which would help the government;and taxpayer’s augment long term 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 old inmates have a higher incidence of disability and disease, and increased difficulty performing activities of daily living than the general population, it is no longer surprising that the cost of their senior 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 that it is a mistake, not to mention fiscally unwise to continue paying for old prisoners unlimited access to medical care, while ailing seniors who have never committed a crime can barely afford the soaring costs of health care. There are some who cannot afford it at all. 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. It is said that older inmates have the lowest recividism 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. So round and round we go. As a society, we need to take a good look at the aging prison population and decide what’s going to happen to them. Are we to make early response programs targeting elderly prisoners who no longer have 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?