Photo by Susan Madden Lankford
According to the ACLU’s 2012 report: At America’s Expense: Mass Incarcerarion of the Elderly, there are 246,600 aging prisoners (50 and older) nationwide. The four jurisdictions with the highest actual number of elderly prisoners are California (27,680), Texas (27,455), Florida (17,980) and the federal prison system (25,160). These four jurisdictions comprise 43% of the nation’s aging prisoners. About 15,000 of these elderly prisoneres are women.
The lack of appropriate healthcare and access to healthy living prior to incarceration, added to the heavy stresses of life behind bars, accelerate the aging process of prisoners so that they are actually physically older than average individuals.The elderly prisoner population increased, on average, by 145% between 1997 and 2007 in 16 southern states—much higher than the total prison population growth rate in those states. White prisoners comprise the largest segment of aging prisoners (42% but Black (33%) and Hispanic (15%) aging prisoners are overrepresented.
The elderly prison population is increasingly comprised of individuals sentenced to
prison for long periods of time, (20 years or more) and they increasingly remain in prison into old age. In 1979, only 2% of aging prisoners fell into this category nationwide, but data collected from jurisdictions shows that this percentage is far higher now. For example, the percentage of aging prisoners now is 15% in Mississippi and 19% in Ohio.
Many individuals who would have been sentenced to shorter periods of incarceration for repeat crimes before 1979 are now caught in the net of later-enacted habitual offender laws and given punishments of 20 years or more. The majority of aging prisoners are incarcerated for low-level, nonviolent crimes.
In Texas, 65% of aging prisoners are in for nonviolent drug crimes, property crimes and other nonviolent crimes. In North Carolina, 26% of prisoners age 50 and older are in prison under habitual offender laws or for drug crimes. Another 14% are in prison for fraud, larceny, burglary, breaking and entering and traffic and public order violations.
The percentage of aging prisoners first imprisoned after they turned 50 is declining. In 1979, 41% of aging prisoners fit into this category nationwide. But in Florida, Texas, and New Hampshire, this percentage dropped to 4-8% in 2012.
Research has conclusively shown that by age 50 most people have significantly outlived the years in which they are most likely to commit crimes. For example, arrest rates drop to just over 2% at age 50 and are almost 0% at age 65. There is also overwhelming evidence that prisoners 50 and older are far less likely to return to prison for new crimes than their younger cohorts. For example, only 7% of New York state prisoners released at ages 50-64 returned to prison for new convictions, and this number was 4% for prisoners released at age 65 and older. In Virginia, only 1.3% of prisoners age 55 and older returned to prison for a new conviction.
It costs $68,270 per year to house a prisoner age 50 and older, so states will save, on average, $66,294 per year per released aging prisoner.
To address unnecessary overcrowding of elderly prisoners, states should grant conditional release to those who pose little public safety risk. States should also utilize and expand medical parole. To accommplish these reforms, states should increase the transparency and accountability of parole boards. Moreover, Congress should reauthorize and expand the provision of the Second Chance Act that authorizes a federal aging prisoner-release program.
To prevent prisons from unnecessarily filling up with aging prisoners, lawmakers should rethink this country’s harsh and disproportionate sentencing regime. The “lock ‘em up and throw away the key” mentality unnecessarily incarcerates millions of people for extraordinarily long periods of time—well into old age, and sometimes until they die.
States and the federal government should reintroduce proportionality into sentences for crimes and should: repeal strict, inflexible and often irrational mandatory minimums laws that require the automatic imposition of brutally long and disproportionate prison sentences and prevent individualized sentencing. These laws prevent judges from tailoring the punishment to the individual circumstances of the case, the defendant and the seriousness of the offense.
