Here is something worth remembering as we celebrate Memorial Day: The Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that every 80 minutes a veteran takes his or her own life.In the mid-1990s, there was a wave of “granny dumping” – elderly people abandoned by families at hospitals and Salvation Army facilities.
That solution is not available to prisons. A Human Rights Watch report shows the number of prisoners older than 55 is growing at a rate six times that of the rest of the prison population. The number of prisoners 65 and older increased 63 percent from 2007 to 2010, while the total prison population rose just 0.7 percent.
The reasons given for the trend toward an aging prison population include longer mandatory minimum sentences and life without parole. And more people older than 50 committing crimes.
The medical costs of elderly prisoners are steep. In Georgia the average annual medical cost of a prisoner older than 65 is $8,565; for a younger one, it’s $961. There are other costs, too, such as retrofitting prison cells to make them handicapped accessible. The judicial system has already made the prisons a dumping ground, and it is not a problem a humane society can ignore.
