From the ACLU:
NEW YORK – The American Civil Liberties Union and the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the University of Texas LBJ School of Public Affairs released Trapped in Time: The Silent Crisis of Elderly Incarceration today, a report exposing how U.S. prisons are failing to keep up with the rising number of aging people behind bars. Outdated sentencing laws have left tens of thousands of people imprisoned for decades, creating a humanitarian, fiscal, and operational crisis as correctional departments struggle to meet the medical, mental health, and accessibility needs of an aging prison population.
The number of older people in prison has skyrocketed over the past three decades, making them one of the fastest-growing groups behind bars. Many were sentenced under outdated extreme sentencing laws as teenagers or young adults and have now spent decades in prison. Yet research shows that elderly individuals are the least likely to reoffend: Recidivism rates for people over 50 are just a fraction of those for younger age groups, as low as 6 percent in certain states like Florida.
“Prisons were never designed to serve as makeshift nursing homes, yet that is exactly what they have become,” said Alyssa Gordon, legal fellow at the ACLU’s National Prison Project and report lead author. “Keeping people locked up into old age does nothing to make us safer, but it guarantees needless suffering and ballooning costs for taxpayers. Releasing elderly people from prison is safe, cost-effective, and would reduce the burden on systems that are ill-equipped to meet the distinct needs of a rapidly aging population. Cost savings could then be reinvested into the community to create and bolster social programs — decarceral solutions that would actually keep us safe.”
Continue reading the report here.
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