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Hugo Vega
Ms. Burnett
English 12
November 22, 2014
Wasting Away in Prison
Over the last decade population in American prisons has increased to be 25% of the
worlds prisoners population. Now it seems it will get even larger as the population of prisoners
over the age of fifty-five is now the fastest growing in American prisons. Not only are they the
fastest growing population in both female and male prisons. They are the most costly to
maintain. This puts a heavy cost for the taxpayers and the U.S. government, both of which are
recovering from a recession. To solve this problem, Federal and State prisons should release
older prisoners' who are both above the age of fifty-five and are low-risk to public safety
Since over a decade, the geriatric population in U.S. prisons has been the fastest growing
in prisons. In the 2012 report written by the Human Rights Watch, Old Behind Bars: The Aging
Prison Population in the United States(2012), they report that between 2002 and 2003, total
prison population increased from 1,380,516 to 1,408,361 while the geriatric population increased
from 40,800 to 60,300. Then in 2009 and 2010 the total population went from 1,550,196 to
1,543,206 while the geriatric population increased from 79,100 to 124,400. This means that the
geriatric prison population has been increasing at a very fast rate, even as the prison population
as a whole has decreased. As a matter of fact, in an article written by KiDuek Kim, Aging
Behind Bars: Trends and Implications of Graying Prisoners in the Federal Prison System(2014),
for the Urban Institute, he claims that over the next five years, the proportion of those ages 49
and younger is expected to have a marginal growth. However, during that same time, the

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proportion of those ages 50 and older, especially those age 65 and older, is projected to increase
at an exceedingly fast rate (Pg. 19). This supports the meaning of the statistics from the Human
Rights Watch report even more. That the geriatric population in prisons is growing at a high rate.
Due to the growing population, in both the geriatric population and the rest of the prison
population, prisons have been overcrowding. According to the Human Rights Watch Report,
they say that U.S. prisons are usually over crowded warehouses that are hard places to live in.
Saying that due the growing population of those under the age of 55 and, soon to be the largest
group, over the age of 55 has overcrowded prisons, making it hard, especially to the older
prisoners, to live their daily lives. In addition to that, in Timothy Williams, from the New York
Times, article, Number of Older Inmates Grows, Stressing Prisons(2014), he writes that it gets
harder for prisons to ensure the safety of older prisons from being exploited by younger prisoners
and as well their personal belongings as the prison population grows. This creates two problems
of not having enough cells to house prisoners comfortably and ensuring their safety. Because of
the growing population, prisons have become unsafe for the geriatric population.
Though prisons are made to hold large numbers of prisoners, but not supplied to house
older prisoners. In prisons, there are policies that are placed there to make sure that prisoners are
kept in check and obey correctional officers. Although the problem with these policies is that
they are made to treat everybody equally (Crary, David). This not only causes problems for those
prisoners who have special needs, but the geriatric population as well. Prisons policies are made
to treat all inmates the same (Crary, David). Since prisons are not made to house older
prisoners, it would make sense that older prisoners have a harder time living in overcrowded
prisons than younger prisoners would. In Ki Duek article, Aging Behind Bars, he reports that not
only do older prisoners also require more treatment and medical care, but they also require more

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time and effort for the same quantity of service or guard-inmate interaction than younger
prisoners (Pg. 63). Sense older prisoners not only have more needs than younger prisoners, they
also need much more attention from correctional officers just to match the same type of attention
younger prisoners receive. The policies prison put in to keep their prisoners in check has not
worked very well since not all prisons, mainly older prisoners, have equal needs.
Not only do older prisoners require more attention, but they also need more medical
services, welfare, treatment, and more. In prisons, prisoners tend to experience accelerated
aging, causing them to have health issues that usually happen to ages higher than they currently
are, meaning they may be 55, but might be suffering from health issues of 65 year olds (Kim,
KiDuek). So because of accelerated aging, prisoners are aging faster than someone outside of
prison. This cause more problem as health issue is showing up in 55 year olds that normally
show up in 65 year olds. In fact older prisoners are more likely than younger ones to develop
mobility impairments, hearing and vision loss, and cognitive limitation (Human Rights Watch).
Problems like these make it difficult for older prisoners live their daily lives and would soon
make younger prisoners, with longer sentences, lives with these difficulties. Plus for some
prisoners "walking a long distance to the dining hall, climbing up to a top bunk, or standing for
count can be virtually impossible for some older prisoners(CNN)

As the geriatric population is quickly growing and the higher medicals, prisons have to
spend more money on their medical needs. It is increasingly costly for correctional systems to
respond to the needs of their growing geriatric populations, including their need for medical and
mental health care (Human Rights Watch). Since health care is not cheap, prisons have to spend

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loads of money on their prisoners. Thats thousands of dollars spent by prisons to just support
their geriatric population. According to the Human Rights Watch report, it says that in
California, medical services expenditures for their inmates ages 55 and is twice as much than a
younger inmate (Pg. 76.). In fact, it goes on later to say that annual medical Expenditures are
three to eight times greater for older state prisoners than others (Pg. 6). This means that the
older prisoner annual cost is much more expensive than a younger prisoner. Daniel Arkin, NBC
News Staff Writer, writes that Roughly $3 billion [of] taxpayer dollars is devoted to providing
health care to sick or dying prisoners. What Arkin is saying is that we spend billions of dollars
on not only for sick prisoners, but dying prisoners as well.
We spend billions of dollars for prisoner health care, but there is a group within the
geriatric population that both cost more and is growing at a faster rate. Women are both growing
faster and cost more than the men within the geriatric population. In KiDuek Kims report, he
reports that older female prisoner populations are growing faster than the older prisoner
population, making the total price of health care, higher because of the higher cost for older
female prisoners. This causes a problem because not only are the geriatric population is growing
a very fast rate, the most costly gender within the population is growing at a faster rate. Kim later
explains that since women live longer and have more needs, their lifetime per capita healthcare
expenditure is around $361,192 while men is around $305,281. In a life time, prisons spend over
$300,000 on an older prisoners medical cost, but even more on older female prisoners. In the
Human Rights Watch report, they reported that inmates 65 years or older have an average
medical service of $8,565 while younger inmates have an average of $961. That is just the basic
services they need, not the rest. Even then, it still cost too much to keep older prisoners in
prisons as they cost eight times more than younger ones just to keep them healthy.

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With all the problems that come with housing older prisoners, prisons have tried
incorrectly to solve the problem. In prisons around the country, they have tried many solutions to
solve or to at least delude the situation. According to Crary David, state prisons have been trying
to meet the needs of older prisoners by opening living facility for disabled prisoners, providing
hospice programs, or new facilities that would house older inmates. Although this might help the
overcrowding problem in prisons, it doesnt completely solve the problem and adds some new
problems. In the Human Rights Watch report, they reported that older individuals may end up
in long term care in facilities that provide the necessary care and access to medical treatment,
but are not set up to provide non-medical programs for the elderly. Unlike a nursing home in the
community which will have age appropriate activities, at CMC( The Correctional Medical
Center in Ohio) there is little for the individuals incarcerated there to do to keep them from
simply wasting away as one staff member told Human Rights Watch. This cannot solve the
problem; in fact it adds more problems. It may help with older prisoners need, but it still doesnt
solve the high medical cost older prisoners have. This actually spends more money since prisons
have to spend more money in order to build these facilities and to maintain them. Not to forget it
also neglects some of the needs of older prisoners. Building facilities does dont solve the
problem, but it adds much more.
Prisons have considered training their officers to become aware of the needs of the
geriatric population, but t raining correctional officers will not help the problem since they dont
focus only on one group in prisons. In the Human Rights Watch, they report on the correctional
officers and how even though corrections officers may be aware of limitations that offenders
may have in their ability to function in their living environment, assessing functional skills and
capabilities of offenders is not one of their formal responsibilities, it is not something they are

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trained to do, and overcrowding may make it impossible to do it sufficiently in any event.
Training correctional will be a hopeless effort since there are too many prisoners to attend to,
making it hard not just for the staff, but older prisoners as well. Although correctional officers
are trained to handle large groups of prisoners, they arent trained well enough to notice the
smaller groups. As an officer told David Crary that we are accustomed to managing large
numbers of inmates, and its challenging to identify particular practices that need to be put into
place for a subset. This means that even if they are trained to identify particular practices, it
would be difficult for them to do so since there are so many other prisoners they have to pay
attention to. However there is a better solution, and as the geriatric population keeps growing in
prisons and costing billions of dollars to taxpayers, the best solution is to release low risk
prisoners from the geriatric population.
Older prisoners should be released as they have a very low risk of reoffending. Even in
their report, the Human Rights Watch says that elder Prisoners are costly to care for, yet
research indicates that many of these older inmates represent a relatively low risk of reoffending
and show high rates of parole success, and those who are released to the community are far
less to recidivate than younger inmates. Proving that releasing older prisoners from prisons is
not only more cost effective, but it is much safer than releasing younger prisoners. In addition to
this, Jennifer Yahner, a writer for the Urban Institute, conducted a research on prisoners who
have been released to find out the chance reentry certain groups have. In her findings, she reports
that inmates of the ages of 30 and higher had a 45% to not be incarcerated, while those under 30
had a 32% chance to reoffend. Proving only more that as prisoners grow older, they are far less
likely to reoffend. Even in the Human Rights Watch report, they state that Violent crime by

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older former prisoners is relatively rare. It is often said that crime is young person's game and
the likelihood a person will commit serious crimes declines with age.
In order to release older prisoners, there has to be a way to select low risk prisoners from
the geriatric population. Prisons cant release prisoners as much as their hearts desire since they
are criminals. Prisons must have a system in place that can identify certain older prisoners that
can be release back to the community without large risks. In Tina Chius report, she
recommended that states should be sure to examine the geriatric release process at every stage
to identify and address potential and existing obstacles. This is to make sure that there are no
errors as they process a potential prisoner. She also goes on to say that States should consider
developing and validating assessment instruments that can identify people within this population
who are at low risk of recidivism. Not to say that older prisoners have a tendency to have a high
risk of recidivism, but just to be sure that they are not going to commit a crime once they are
released. She also recommends that if states want to reduce correction spending by releasing
elderly inmates that they should generate comprehensive estimates of the overall cost savings
to taxpayers. Since the point of releasing older prisoners is to save money for both the
government and the taxpayers. When these policies are in place, states must continue to examine
them they released to make sure that they are working as they were intended and as effectively as
possible.
Supervision of the released prisoners after they have been released will be as important as
picking them. We have to supervise newly released prisoners because we have to not ensure the
safety of the public, but the former prisoners as well. In Timothy Williams New York Times
article, he quotes Jamie Fellner states that when prisoners are so old and infirm that they are not
a threat to public safety, they should be released under supervision. This must be because in

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order to ensure that this policy is not abused and not a free pass out of prisons, we must
supervise these newly released prisoners to not only keep them in-check, but to also prove to the
public that they are no harm to the community. There is one thing that has to be addressed about
this solution. Most of these newly released prisoners have nowhere to stay. That is why policies
should be made to insure them a place to stay, such as nursing homes, so that not only they can
be supervised, but also have a place to sleep since it is hard for older prisoners to find
somewhere to stay after they are released (Human Rights Watch). This must be done because
older adults have a hard time do simple tasks and need assistance. That is why there must also be
policies put into place to guarantee that a newly released, elderly, prisoner has not only a place to
sleep, but a place that the can live. Due to their sentence in prison most elderly offenders will
have lost touch with their families and friends, who are either dead, too old to visit, or have
simply moved on with their lives (Porporino, Frank J Pg. 1). There then they can be
reconnected with their families, and possibly friends, and not only have them to take care some
of their medical expenses, but also have people that actually care about them around.
Older prisoners in State and Federal prisons that are both over fifty-five and are low risk
to public safety, should be released. The geriatric population in prisons are not just quickly
growing, but they are also the most expensive to maintain. They cost billions of dollars to
taxpayers because theyre dying or are sick. So releasing is the best solution, because expanding
will cost too much and training correctional officers will not help because of the sheer number of
prisoners there are. Releasing them is both the safest and the most cost effective choice. Polices
should be put in place to find older prisoners that are safe to release to the community without
risking public safety. If they cant find anywhere to live, there must be polices set to help these
newly released elders to find a nursing home to help them live their daily lives. Releasing older

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prisoners that are low risk is the best option to save spending of taxpayer dollars and prisons
funds.

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Work Cited
1. Arkin, Danie. "Exploding Number of Elderly Prisoners Strains System, Taxpayers." NBC
News. NBC News, 29 June 2013. Web. 29 Oct. 2014.
2. Chiu, Tina. It's about Time: Aging Prisoners, Increasing Costs and Geriatric Release.
New York, NY: Vera Institute of Justice, 2010.Web. October 16, 2014
3. Crary, David. "Elderly Inmates: Aging Prison Population Strains Tight State
Budgets." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 27 Jan. 2012. Web. 29 Oct.
2014.
4. Human Right Watch. "Old Behind Bars: The Aging Prison Population in the United
States" Human Right Watch, January 27, 2012.Web. October 28, 2014
5. Kim, KiDeuk, and Bryce Peterson. "Aging Behind Bars." Urban Institute, August
2014.Web.October 16, 2014
6. Kuhlmann, Robynn. "Gray Matters: Elderly Jail and Prison Inmates." Issues in
Correctional Health: 193, 2008.Web. October 24, 2014
7. Porporino, Frank J. "MANAGING THE ELDERLY IN CORRECTIONS." April
2014.Web. October 16, 2014.
8. Staff, CNN Wire. "Human Rights Watch Expresses Concern for Aging Prisoners." CNN.
Cable News Network, 27 Jan. 2012. Web. 29 Oct. 2014.
9. Williams, Timothy. "Number of Older Inmates Grows, Stressing Prisons."The New York
Times. The New York Times, 26 Jan. 2012. Web. 29 Oct. 2014.
10. Yahner, Jennifer. "Illinois prisoners' reentry success three years after release." Urban
Institute, August 2008.Web. October 27, 2014