AGING INMATES CLOG U.S. PRISONS

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USA TODAY - 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.. . . Justice Department statistics show that the
number of inmates in federal and state prisons age 55 and older shot up
33% from 2000 to 2005, the most recent year for which the data was
available. That's faster than the 9% growth overall. The trend is
particularly pronounced in the South, which has some of the nation's
toughest sentencing laws. In 16 Southern states, the growth rate has
escalated by an average of 145% since 1997, according to the Southern
Legislative Conference.

Rising prison health care costs — particularly for elderly inmates —
helped fuel a 10% jump in state prison spending from fiscal year 2005 to
2006, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. That
growth in spending is projected to continue, the group said. The graying
of the nation's prisons mirrors the population as whole. But many
inmates arrive in prison after years of unhealthy living, such as drug
use and risky sex. The stress of life behind bars can often make them
even sicker.

And once they enter prison walls, they aren't eligible for Medicaid or
Medicare, where the costs are shared between the state and federal
government, meaning a state shoulders the burden of inmate health care
on its own.

Estimates place the annual cost of housing an inmate at $18,000 to
$31,000 a year. There is no firm separate number for housing an elderly
inmate, but there is widespread agreement that it's significantly higher
than for a younger one.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-09-29-aging-inmates_N.htm?csp=34


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