I would say that we need to consider how to deal with the huge number of prisoners who will become elederly in the next 20 years. Quite apart from the expense of caring for these people, does it really make sense to keep them in jail? their capability to re-offend is pretty limited, once they hit 65.
And I for one, can’t see paying for health care for them.
So, should we parole them t some age, say 65?
I say no - age alone doesn’t determine fitness. And not all crimes require you to be able to run a marathon.
I say go by a certains standard of fitness - let them out when they’re dead. (Assuming they’re not let out prior to then for other reasons, of course.)
Do a risk assessment on a case by case basis. See if they’re unlikely to re-offend, determine how much of their sentence they’ve served already, review the nature of their offense (sex offenders aren’t popular folks to release among the public).
Then review their particular medical needs. If they can be kept safely at a nursing home on the outside, it is far, far cheaper to do that than to keep them in prison (not jail!).
But I’m against releasing them just because they’re 65. Plenty of healthy oldsters can still make mischief at that age.
Hell, we just had an 83 year old come in for his first prison term a few years ago. He shot his wife to death for disrespecting him. He suffered no mental disease, he was just ornery and thought he could get away with it. He’s not going to get released real soon.
Providing medical care for the sicker older inmates is already getting very, very expensive, and will continue to cost more as the inmate population ages (thanks to mandatory sentencing laws which keep folks in longer).
Hey, as long as you’re cool with your tax dollars being spent faster and faster to provide for their medical and custodial needs, that’s fine.
But when it costs on the order of $150k a year or more to incarcerate some of our sick elderly folks who aren’t risks to others, some folks want to re-think this.
That a different issue than paroling by age. That’s saying “it’s not cost effective to incarcerate these people”. If you want to parole people for being invalids that’s fine, but it’s not at all the same thing - you can be an invalid at 30, if you manage to lose enough limbs or something.
I want to point out that you will STILL be paying to take care of them once you release them. They will be eligible for Medicare and probably Social Security. It will be a lot cheaper, but don’t assume that once they are released they are off the dole.
Moving the elderly out max security and into different types of incarceration might make a lot more sense (and for all I know it is already done).
Releasing a geriatric felon early because we don’t feel like paying for his medical bills is fucking evil.
I’d say releasing a geriatric felon who is incarcerated for a non-violent crime and unlikely to reoffend isn’t a bad idea…
…but then again, you can take “geriatric” out of the above sentence and I’d still pretty much agree with it.
Why is it evil? In the US, Medicare will insure him, and he’ll have access to health care. Heck, it’s even part of the discharge planning for our elderly inmates who are getting out, our social workers get the paperwork set up for them.
Absolutely not! Predators need to be in the pink of health to be able to catch any prey, which is why they often let animals go who put up a fight…ohhh, geriatric felons. Nevermind.
How does that work in practice? If you’ve got a 70 year old inmate who hasn’t been on the outside in 30 years, he’s not going to be able to get a job (or if it does, it won’t pay much), his Social Security won’t be much (given his abbreviated work history), and Medicare doesn’t cover everything. He may or may not have kin who still want to have anything to do with him.
ISTM that no matter how well you prep these guys for leaving, and how much you ensure that they don’t have to deal with the paperwork, many of them would have the basic problem of being unable to make ends meet. How does that play out in practice?
[Edited: ‘being unable to make’ was originally ‘making’.]
It puts them on par with a lot of impoverished elderly who haven’t spent time in prison, basically.
We arrange for a lot of nursing home placements (using state funding) for our elderly infirm discharges. I don’t know where the funds come from, but they usually do turn up some sort of placement options.
We’re not currently releasing the “old and sick” unless they a) have a life expectency of less than 6 months b) have been cleared for release by a judge, and c) have family willing to take them in.
How big a population of geezers is there in prison.? How about those younger but too sick or crippled to sin again.?,
I too would be interested to see an age breakdown of folks incarcerated in the US prison system.
<<supposes I could google that information for myself>>
There may be something better, but I found a 2000 Census table that breaks the ‘group quarters’ population down by sex, age, and type of quarters (prisons, nursing homes, college dorms, etc.). Unfortunately, the age breakdown is only <18, 18-64, and 65+.
The upshot is that out of about 2 million persons in correctional institutions in 2000, only about 16,000 were 65 or older.
This is in Table PCT17. To get that, go here,
select ‘Nation’ and ‘United States’, click ‘Add,’ click ‘Next,’ then in the new box, scroll all the way down to PCT17, select that, click ‘Add’ and ‘Show Result.’
You’d think there’d be an easier way, but the Census’ website isn’t very user-friendly by contemporary standards.
Every prison cell should have a built-in noose for every prisoner to use at their convenience.
Problem solved.
IMO, every prisoner should be released once they’ve done some token amount of time and seem unlikely to reoffend.
The old and sick, if only by virtue of their physical conditions and the fact that they have less time left to get into trouble, are probably less likely to reoffend than the young and healthy, even for the same crimes. As the good doc says, it ought not to be automatic (except perhaps for invalids with very little time left to live), but I’ve no problem with the parole board taken a convict’s age and physical condition into account when deciding how much of a risk they pose.
EVERY prisoner? Regardless of the crime? What is the “token amount” you speak of?
Yup. I simply don’t see any point in keeping anyone in prison once we (“we” being the court system) have a reasonable belief that they’ll no longer be a danger to society. I don’t believe the government should be in the revenge game, which is what incarceration past that point means. I also think that the deterrent value of prison can be obtained after relatively short sentences.
Now, that’s not to say that some people won’t still be locked up for a very long time. Some for life. The parole examination should be very rigorous. But if a prisoner’s history and current behavior indicate that they are unlikely to reoffend, they should be released.
That would depend on the crime. I think that every crime should have *some *punishment. And that it’s probably best to allow some prison time before even considering if a prisoner is safe to let out.
I see this time being six months or less for most non-violent crimes. I can’t see considering releasing a murderer in less than five years. That’s when you’d *start *considering releasing them. Only the most obviously harmless would get out *that *soon.
Why does it cost more to keep sick people in a prison than not? Is it just the security involved? Or do we have to pay doctors and nurses more to work in a “non-traditional” environment?