Aging inmates clogging nation's prisons

[rodeodance]

Source: ap



Aging inmates clogging nation's prisons

By SHANNON McCAFFREY, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 2 minutes ago

HARDWICK, Ga. - Razor wire topping the fences seems almost a joke at the Men's State Prison, where many inmates are slumped in wheelchairs, or leaning on walkers or canes.


It's becoming an increasingly common sight: geriatric inmates spending their waning days behind bars. The soaring number of aging inmates is now outpacing the prison growth as a whole.

Tough sentencing laws passed in the crime-busting 1980s and 1990s are largely to blame. It's all fueling an explosion in inmate health costs for cash-strapped states.

"It keeps going up and up," said Alan Adams, director of Health Services for the Georgia Department of Corrections. "We've got some old guys who are too sick to get out of bed. And some of them, they're going to die inside. The courts say we have to provide care and we do. But that costs money."......

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070929/ap_on_re_us/aging_prisoners;_ylt=AqsTAIOO68GAaIlHWZwoeLSs0NUE

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Long term consequences seldom enter the lock em up gang!

[Demeter]

1. Taking a Whacky Idea to Its Absurd Conclusion

This is our national retirement plan.

I can see W and Cheney wheeling around Levenworth...chair racing.

[aquart]

11. "Can" see it? Or "would pay to" see it?

Make the viewing a national, no make that international, raffle. Pay off the national debt in a trice.

[sandnsea]

2. Let's commute those sentences

and give 'em taxi rides to the local homeless encampment. I give it 3 years before we start seeing them change the laws, and make it sound "compassionate" in the process.

[TransitJohn]

3. It's a sad situation.

But I still have to laugh. I totally saw this coming back when we reduced the American system of justice to a sports metaphor.

[xchrom]

4. mandatory setencing -- to many mega prisons --

no emphasis that's worth speaking of on rehabilitation.

oh and -- too many big prisons.

you cannot squeeze -- especially men -- people together like sardines and get any good results.

[Exultant Democracy]

5. U.S.A! U.S.A!

If we put blackwater in charge of our prisons they might solve the overcrowding.

[coffeenap]

6. Wait, this is an

investor's dream: Retirement prisons! New market for tax dollar subsidized business! Why didn't anyone think of it before?

:sarcasm:

(Watch it happen.)

[freethought]

7. Solve one problem but create another

An increasing prison population of elderly. Keeping them in costs money. What else is new.
Okay, well, they're likely to old to much of a threat criminally, why not let them out?
Okay ,let them out, then what? They're too old to go back into the work force and they'll need care anyway. Oh, and its likely they don't have any kind of financial support either. So if you let them out you have just created one of the most inhumane things I can think off being elderly, penniless and homeless.

[ProudDad]

9. They ain't dead, they just ain't likely to be "criminals"

It would still be a HELL of a lot cheaper to let them out and help them than to keep them locked up.

If we had a decent system of rehabilitation for our brothers and sisters who transgress rather than the hypocritical system of violence and torture that demeans, degrades and dehumanizes "them" and creates more vicious and more well trained "criminals" and that corrodes the soul of society, this wouldn't be an issue.

For more information on how we got here and what we can do about it:

"Beyond Prisons: A New Interfaith Paradigm for Our Failed Prison System"

http://www.afscstore.org/store/product_info.php?products_id=5195


And boy, howdy, is it EVER failed!!!



On Edit: Oh, and Universal Single-Payer would take care of the "health care" argument...

[Zhade]

10. Uh, as a nonbeliever, this makes me too itchy to even want to read the idea.

Religion is not called for in criminal matters - separation of church and state and all.

[ProudDad]

13. It's the f*cking QUAKERS

It's NOT a religious treatise, it's a complete and unblinking critique of the the system, how we got here and what needs to be done to change it into something socially useful.

The book makes that very point, that applying the christianist myths and assumptions on the system has been a primary CAUSE of the problems in the system...

[pattmarty]

8. Hey, let's put 'em all to death, save some money too, and make room for new ones

[Nutmegger]

12. The Prison Industrial Complex in Amurika is alive and well.

And this "though on crime" crap that has been pushed down our throats.

Highest incarceration rates in the world .... even more than China.

Wow.