The Washington Post has a chilling feature on America’s aging prison population. Masses of inmates slapped with harsh sentences for low-level drug offenses in the 80s and 90s now mean that some prisons have “effectively been turned into convalescent homes”—and at quite the price tag. One prisoner over the age of 50 can cost up to three times more than the average prisoner.
At one prison near Boston, 115 inmates receive dialysis:
Down the hallway, inmates in wheelchairs line up to receive their daily pills and insulin shots.
The problem of the aging prison population has been highlighted by several recent reports—between 1991 and 2011, the number of inmates over the age of 44 grew 8 percent every year, and the proportion of prisoners 54 and up nearly tripled, according to the Wall Street Journal. Inmates 50 to 65 are now the largest and fastest-growing demographic in the prison population.
“Our federal prisons are starting to resemble nursing homes surrounded with razor wire,” said Julie Stewart, president and founder of Families Against Mandatory Minimums. “It makes no sense fiscally, or from the perspective of human compassion, to incarcerate men and women who pose no threat to public safety and have long since paid for their crime. We need to repeal the absurd mandatory minimum sentences that keep them there.”
“Why are we keeping someone behind bars who is bedridden and needs assistance to get out of bed and feed and clothe himself?” Jamie Fellner of Human Rights Watch asked. “What do we gain from keeping people behind bars at an enormous cost when they no longer pose any danger to the public if they were released?”
The Post profiled several individual prisoners, including 58-year-old Luis Anthony Rivera of Miami, sentenced to life plus 140 years for conspiracy to import cocaine. He’s been behind bars for 30 years already. It was his first offense.
Another prisoner, a veteran who won two Purple Hearts in Vietnam, joined a motorcycle group and was talked into moving drugs by an undercover cop. He reluctantly took the deal for the money, and kept a gun on-hand to protect himself.
When he was convicted in 1995, in addition to drug charges—24 years—he was also charged with possessing a firearm while committing a drug offense—another 25 years, tallying up to essentially life in prison.
He’s now 63, and has various medical problems including a foot condition that necessitates a medical boot.
Many of these prisoners have no other recourse than to hope for clemency—a dim hope, since Obama’s clemency record is among the worst in history.
