Whenever a federal penitentiary is depicted in a film or a television show, it’s portrayed as a desolate, godforsaken environment: an isolated community in which the inmate population, predominantly young black or Hispanic males emblazoned with gang tattoos and menacing expressions, is kept occupied fighting, stealing, dealing drugs and killing each other.
These horrifying places keep hardened killers off the streets, allowing the rest of us honest citizens to sleep easy at night.
While in reality hellholes such as these do indeed exist outside the world of cinema, American prisons as a whole have a much wider and more diverse demographic, in jails with varying levels of inmate comfort and security designed to accommodate the broad spectrum of felonies committed nation-wide. This flexible imprisoning of a nation’s assorted fringe outcasts is an integral part of any society.
Where there’s crime, there should be punishment. It’s a well-intentioned sentiment, but like any ideal, there are flaws when it comes to putting this concept into practice.
The costs of America’s penitentiary system have soared in recent years, in no small part because of the rapidly increasing age of inmates and the various health care costs accrued by them. Corrections costs rose from $52.5 billion in 2000 to $68.7 billion in 2006 and continue to go up, even as crime has decreased nationwide over that same time-span.
Primarily due to Baby Boomer-era inmates clogging the system, the overall population of prisoners 55 or older increased by 82 percent from 1999 to 2007, according to Bureau of Justice statistics.
States spend roughly 10 percent of their corrections budget on health care for inmates, and a high percentage of that goes to elderly inmates — on average, the cost of housing a traditional inmate is $33 per day, while an elderly prisoner runs overall costs up to $100 a day.
Incarcerating the elderly isn’t cost effective for many reasons. Prison conditions don’t exactly boost a person’s continued good heath, and the combination of the less-than-hospitable conditions, stress from living in confinement and the natural deterioration of the aging human body drastically increases the likelihood of health problems for older prisoners. Prisoners often smoke heavily or abuse drugs, further damaging their long-term health.
And it’s not like convicts can be left to rot in their cells either. In 1976, the Supreme Court ruled in Estelle v. Gamble that ignoring serious medical needs of prisoners constitutes “unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain,” therefore violating the Eighth Amendment, which states that “cruel and unusual punishment” shall not be inflicted on prisoners.
Wards of the U.S. penitentiary systems are thus entitled to free health care, coverage that is often superior to what an ordinary citizen can receive.
Comfortable abodes and high-end health benefits are given to people who have been imprisoned for breaking the laws and infringing on the individual rights of the people who are footing their bills.
The answer to both the glut of ancient, decrepit prisoners and the steadily rising costs of housing the county’s criminals is simple: Release them early.
Cue the outraged, “Wait, we’re letting them off easy?” Sure, everyone wants convicted felons to serve every second of their sentences. But let’s be realistic: 52 percent of the incarcerated elderly are serving life sentences for non-violent crimes.
Does the taxpayer really need to keep paying their bills until they pass away from old age and boredom? And while releasing prisoners early might stick in one’s gullet, how much damage is a frail, medically unsound 74-year-old really capable of?
And it’s not like methods don’t already exist for the negation of prison sentences. Official pardons and parole boards erase gobs of time off sentencing, often letting legitimately dangerous potential repeat offenders back into local communities to commit more crimes.
Prisons exist to contain people deemed dangers to society and to punish those people for their misdeeds. But what happens when the system we’ve devised to accomplish those goals ends up providing free health care and improved quality of life to individuals who are physically unable to pose any risk to the general public? In these cases, said individuals should be promptly released, freeing up cell beds and funding for the people who deserve to spend their best years behind bars.
We shouldn’t be spending our hard-earned tax dollars on pampering the elderly who clog up our prisons and jails. Cut them free, allow them to finance their health problems on their own dime, and let them fend for themselves. We need to allow the national penal system’s funding to do the job we pay taxes for it to do: keeping us safe by keeping dangerous threats off the streets and behind bars.
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Kyle-Milward: Releasing elderly, sickly prisoners could relieve burden
Daily Emerald
November 21, 2010
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