Increasing Proportion Of The Elderly

According to statistical data found in the Bureau for Justice Records, there are a number of problems that most prisons in the country face. The records indicate that the number of adult federal and state inmates increased from `139% in `1980 to 260% (Walker, 1999). As a natural default, the United States of America has the highest incarceration rate in the world. This in itself brings about one of the major problems that are faced in modern incarceration which is overcrowding in most prison facilities. The number of offenders in the country has increased rapidly over time while the country prison system has not really been able to cope with this rapid increase. Prisons intended for one or two inmates are now crowded with more than fifty individuals. Because of this most prisons are overcrowded and most of the facilities available are unable to cater for the needs of all the prisoners (Siegel, 2009).

Prisons where essentially build to accommodate a number of prisoners but over the years it has reach over capacity. Today in the United States there are approximately 193,468 federal inmates that consisting of the Bureau of Prisons Custody, private managed facilities and other facilities. The inmates ages range from 18- 65 with the median age being in their late 30’s. This number is counting both male and female population with male being 93.3% of inmates and females being 6.7%. The number of inmates has steadily increase since 1980 with only having approximately less than 50,000 but today the number has gone more up. Drug offenses are the highest number for inmate’s imprisonment, the next highest offense would be weapons, explosives and arson; immigration and miscellaneous fall next in lines. The number for the other offenses such as robbery, extortion, fraud, bribery, burglary, larceny, property offenses and other offenses are lower. Overcrowding prison has become problematic as the prison population continue to increase leading to proper care and attention for prisoners.

For prisons to be safe and secure there must be sufficient physical security, consistent implementation of security practices, established methods to control inmate behavior, and adequate preparation to reduce the likelihood or to respond to inmate unrest. For prison staff to provide effective rehabilitative services there must be an assessment of the needs and best practices of a programs focusing on substance abuse, mental health, religious services, education recreation, rehabilitation, and work opportunities. Fully understanding the importance of these programs and implementing them effectively is crucial for prisons to accomplish their dual mission of confinement and rehabilitation.

In order to have an understanding of how significant of an issue the aging population in prison is, it is important to have an idea of what the population looks like, including how many aging and elderly inmates are currently incarcerated, the demographics of the aging and elderly prison population. For the purposes of understanding the demographics of the aging and elderly incarcerated populations, both the Federal Prison System and the Illinois State Correctional System will be described separately.

The graying of the nation’s inmates is also an issue which continues to swell the cost of health care within the prison. According to the Pew Center, “…between 1992 and 2001, the number of state and federal inmates aged 50 or older rose from 41,586 to 113,358.” Older inmates are gradually making up a larger proportion of the overall count. While one may say that aging decreases criminal activity, such as those that result from communicable diseases mentioned from the previous paragraph, there are many more factors that should be considered. One problem is that older inmates are often preyed upon by younger, stronger inmates; therefore, older inmates may require special housing. Hearing and visual

In the 1970s and 1980s, a massive amount of inmates began fillin up the United States prison systems. This huge rate of growth in this short amount of time, has greatly contributed to the prison overcrowding that the United States faces today. In fact, the prisons are still filled to the seams. This enormous flood of inmates has made it practically impossible for prison officials to keep up with their facilities and supervise their inmates. One of the main reasons why many prisons have become overcrowded is because of states’ harsh criminal laws and parole practices (Cohen). “One in every 100 American adults is behind bars, the highest incarceration rate in the world” (Cohen). The amount of inmates in corrections systems, throughout the

The challenges of the elderly prison population are mostly cost related. Due to the fact that as baby boomers throughout the nation have begun to age the prison population in the United States has aged as well. For example, the elderly prison population in 2003 was almost 10 percent and in nearly a decade later the elderly prison population doubled. A 2014 analysis by the Urban Institute posits that this increase in the elderly population could carry significant financial costs. When comparing the elderly population to that of the general population, they tend to experience accelerated ageing caused by things such as substance abuse and any other unhealthy choices in lifestyle. Also, according to this report by the Urban Institute elderly prisoners

The aging population in the prison system is an underserved and often ignored population. Neglecting to provide adequate care for this population is a societal error that negatively impacts not only the prison population but society as a whole. Prisons are typically used for rehabilitation purposes. Current policies that force prisoners to remain incarcerated well into old age need to be reviewed to assess for alternative solutions that respect the dignity of the aging population and are beneficial to society as well. We must proceed with a question in mind, is the purpose of the prison system to act as a rehabilitation/punishment system or a revenge/punishment system?

Geriatric offenders are living much longer than elderly men and women of past decades, producing a growth in the prison institutions. According to

The idea of sympathetic release of ill and elderly prisoners is not new. In 1994, Professor Russell published consideration of medical parole and compassionate release programs of district and fifty states of Columbia. Only three

Dementia, a disease characterized with the loss of brain functions; loss of memory, thinking and ability to reason clearly, has been on the rise in the American prisons. Law on the mandatory sentencing of criminals in the 1970s gave rise to the present high population of inmates and the costs associated. This disease associated with the elderly, is evident in the states and federal prisons with the numbers of elderly inmates on the rise, 125 000 by 2010. The budgets amounting from the costs incurred in the furnishing of specialized care to these inmates who cannot even clean or dress themselves are high. The inmates expect their health costs taken by the federal government being a part of state corrections costs still on the rise. The federal government and state agencies have to work on strategies focused at reducing the rising costs of the aging inmate population (NYT, 2012).

The rising cost of inmate health care in American prisons has been a topic of discussion for many. What has not been discussed as attentively, though, are the rising mental health costs for the aging inmate population. The mandatory sentencing policies instituted in the 1970s have caused a dramatic increase in the nation’s prison population, with 125,000 of 1.5 million inmates being aged 55 years or older in 2010, according to a Human Rights Watch report. Annual health care costs for an inmate aged 55-59 are approximately $11,000, while the annual costs for an inmate aged 80 and higher are nearly four times that amount. Compare these figures to the $5,500 annual health care cost for a younger inmate and the issue becomes undeniable – it is essential that our nation discovers a way to both decrease health care costs for inmates and address the growing population of elderly inmates.

The increase in older inmates is due in part to the shift in thinking, rather than rehabilitating the ‘sick’, we should incapacitate those who offend. Moreover, aging inmates have increased in number because of medical advancement. Through these major changes inmates have been growing rapidly amongst the prison population. Rather than treat offenders as ‘sick’ individuals and crime as an ‘illness’ we should focus on incapacitating criminals from committing future crimes—such punishment includes mandatory minimum sentencing. Thus, the shift in reasoning has led to inmates being incarcerated for longer periods of time leading to growth of older inmates. As for medical advancement, the availability of new medication and treatments has aided

Disconnecting elderly folks from their families and incarcerating every person who commits crime without thinking logically: Is this what modernization and our teachings adds up to? Is it even fair that human beings are taught to do these things to us from the very beginning of our educational lives? Kwame Anthony Appiah discusses several points in “How The Future Will Judge Us?” that he believes are negatively affecting our society in terms of how we treat people directly or indirectly. These points include criticism of our prison system, institutionalized and isolated elderly, the destruction of the environment, and the industrial meat production system. His main concern regarding these subjects is for the upcoming generation which might view us negatively. He makes two important claims; firstly, no other country has as extensive a populace in jail as compared to America, including non-violent offenders, and secondly, while some elderly Americans may live freely, they are frequently disconnected from their families despite having many living relatives. These problems can be solved by thinking logically to figure out permanent solutions. For instance, we should provide the elderly with emotional and medical needs because they deserve it, and secondly, a more profound way to deal with prisoners is through rehabilitation programs because unlike animals, they have the ability to understand the difference between right and wrong.

This article focuses on, and provides a methodology for determining why it is that the age distribution in the United States prison system is becoming increasingly high. According to the article, the cutoff for determining if a prisoner is elderly or not is 50 years old. The method that they propose uses prison data from four states in order to draw their conclusions. This method operates off of four factors: 1) the changes in admission rates to prisons, 2) changes in the age distribution of individuals being admitted to prison, 3) changes in the mix of different offenses that individuals are sent to prison for, and 4) changes to the length of sentences given to convicted offenders.