Aging Prisoners In Prisons

Not only do older prisoners require more attention, but they also need more medical services, welfare, treatment, and more. In prisons, “prisoners tend to experience accelerated aging, causing them to have health issues that usually happen to ages higher than they currently are, meaning they may be 55, but might be suffering from health issues of 65 year olds” (Kim, KiDuek). So because of accelerated aging, prisoners are aging faster than someone outside of prison. This cause more problem as health issue is showing up in 55 year olds that normally show up in 65 year olds. In fact “older prisoners are more likely than younger ones to develop mobility impairments, hearing and vision loss, and cognitive limitation” (Human Rights Watch). Problems …show more content…
Women are both growing faster and cost more than the men within the geriatric population. In KiDuek Kim’s report, he reports that older female prisoner populations are growing faster than the older prisoner population, making the total price of health care, higher because of the higher cost for older female prisoners (pg.). This causes a problem because not only are the geriatric population is growing a very fast rate, the most costly gender within the population is growing at a faster rate. Kim later explains that since women live longer and have more needs, their lifetime per capita healthcare expenditure is around $361,192 while men is around $305,281 (pg. ). In a life time, prisons spend over $300,000 on an older prisoners medical cost, but even more on older female prisoners. In the Human Rights Watch report, they reported that inmates 65 years or older have an average medical service of $8,565 while younger inmates have an average of $961. That is just the basic services they need, not the rest. Even then, it still cost too much to keep older prisoners in prisons as they cost eight times more than younger ones just to keep them healthy. With all the problems that come with housing older prisoners, prisons have tried incorrectly to solve the problem. In prisons around the country, they have tried many solutions to solve or to at least delude the situation. According to Crary David, state prisons have been trying to meet the needs of older prisoners by opening living facility for disabled prisoners, providing hospice programs, or new facilities that would house older inmates. Although this might help the overcrowding problem in prisons, it doesn’t completely solve the problem and adds some new problems. In the Human Rights Watch report, they reported that “older individuals may end up in long term