Growing numbers of elderly inmates are putting financial and social pressure on the U.S. prison system.
At
The Nation, Kate Cox writes
By 2030, American Prisons Will Be Filled With Grandmas and Grandpas:
More than thirty years ago, Mohaman G. Koti shot a police officer during a parking ticket dispute in which no one was killed. He is now in his late 80s and suffers from asthma and a neuromuscular disorder. He doesn’t hear so well, either. Yet Koti, a well-known peacemaker behind prison walls, was denied parole every two years beginning in 2005 because New York State still considered him a risk to public safety. The state did this despite the fact that it costs, on average, twice as much to lock up a stooped grandfather with digestive problems as it does to hold a healthy young man—and can sometimes cost as much as five times more. It was only last month, after many denials, that Koti was finally granted parole. He will re-enter the population just a few years shy of his ninetieth birthday.
Gloria Rubero, 64, was lucky enough to avoid this fate. She got released from prison before she became so old and infirm that her story took on the absurdist warp of Koti’s case. But she quickly found that life on the outside as an aging ex-inmate had its own challenges. When she was sentenced to twenty-to-life for murder and robbery, we still called the Internet ARPANET; there were no smartphones or digital cameras, and CDs were considered cutting edge. Twenty-six years later she was released into an unfamiliar, wireless world. She had no driver’s license, no birth certificate, no idea how to use a subway card, and the people who might once have helped her navigate these novelties—friends and neighbors—had disappeared. In the lonely chaos of the free world, she often found herself longing for the security of prison. [...]
All across the United States, prison populations are graying, growing old and infirm behind bars. Between 1995 and 2010, the number of people in prison who are older than 55 quadrupled, and the numbers keep increasing. Today, nearly 16 percent of this country’s 2-plus million prisoners are over the age of 50, or “elderly,” as defined by the National Institute of Corrections. By 2030, a third of all inmates will be elderly—and many prisons may look a lot like nursing homes. [...]
This is a man-made crisis that tracks back to the nation’s long obsession with retribution, which peaked in the 1980s and 1990s. That’s when the “tough on crime” and “war on drugs” ideologies reigned supreme, spawning mandatory minimum sentences and “three strikes” laws, among other things. Now, several decades later, people sentenced during this wave of aggressive incarceration are hitting their 50s and 60s—and the full meaning of “twenty-five-to-life” is becoming clear.
“The sheer number and the specialized needs of the aging prison population have begun to surpass correctional facilities’ capability to provide effective and humane care,” the Osborne Association and Florence V. Burden Foundation warn in a recent report titled “The High Costs of Low Risk.” […]
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2013—Harvard or not, Chris Christie is much smarter than Ted Cruz. Do Republicans care?:
Ted Cruz always thinks he's the smartest guy in the room. Jason Zengerle wrote in GQ that the senator from Texas "has come to the reluctant but unavoidable conclusion that he is simply more intelligent, more principled, more right—in both senses of the word—than pretty much everyone else in our nation's capital." A roommate from Harvard Law School said Cruz announced he'd only study with students who'd graduated from Harvard, Yale or (like he did) Princeton.
New Jersey's Gov. Chris Christie graduated from the University of Delaware, and got his law degree at Seton Hall. I'll bet Christie thinks he's pretty smart too, whatever Sen. Cruz thinks of his pedigree. In recent days we've seen these two men, two of the leading candidates for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, take diametrically opposed paths in doing their respective jobs.
Earlier in the week, Christie threw in the towel in his fight against marriage equality in New Jersey. The State Supreme Court had issued a unanimous ruling that allowed same-sex marriages to go forward while waiting to hear the Christie administration's appeal, and stated therein that the appeal had little “reasonable probability of success.” Christie then decided to drop the appeal (one aide called it a "fool's errand"), and the fight was over.
Let's compare how Christie handled this matter to the Ted Cruz-led strategy carried out by tea party Republicans in Congress, a strategy that led to a two-week long government shutdown, threatened to force a default on our national debt obligations, and which cost our country, according to Standard & Poor's, about $25 billion. Remember, the goal of the shutdown and the default threat was to blackmail President Obama into defunding his signature legislation, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).
Tweet of the Day
50 years ago today, Ronald Reagan gave a speech on freedom, for a presidential candidate who endorsed Southern resistance of desegregation.
— @EricKleefeld
On
today's Kagro in the Morning show: Chris Christie has 2nd thoughts about having 2nd thoughts about quarantine.
Greg Dworkin (who it turns out is a doctor) note the Libertarian silence. What's the difference between a constitution-hating gun-grabber and a Second Amendment patriot? They'll both offer you similar facts, but the patriot will sell you gun accessories afterward.
Armando has two cents on the legality of quarantine.
Ian Reifowitz talks to us about the Republican non-jobs plans, voter suppression, and zombie lies, as well as Krugman's latest public investment proposal.
Rosalyn MacGregor shares "The Most Common Jobs For The Rich, Middle Class And Poor."
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