The other day Sara Mayeux highlighted this piece on the growing problem of costs associated with aging inmates in Georgia. As she points out, this isn't merely a local problem. Here's a graph from a report by the Pew Center on the States and the Vera Institute of Justice on the growth of the inmate population over 45 and 55:
In a 2004 report, the National Institute of Corrections said that the annual cost of incarceration is around "$60,000 to $70,000 for each elderly inmate compared with about $27,000 for others in the general population." Part of this is due to rising health-care costs in general; part of it is due to the fact that the stresses of prison life and the poverty that often precedes it wear even more harshly on older people.
It's not immediately clear how to cut costs here without simply changing which part of the government pays the bill. A number of states have geriatric release programs that might lower costs, but that depends on a number of factors, including the inmate's ability to take care of themselves after release. The other thing is that states that have these programs don't really use them, either because the requirements are so strict they screen out potential releases or they're politically dicey.
Obviously you don't want any Lockerbie Bomber type situations where dangerous inmates or those who have committed heinous crimes are getting a pass just because they're old, but by the time you're 55 you're pretty much past crime-committing age. According to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, offenders over 50 have a recidivism rate of only 9.5 percent. Compare that to offenders under 21, who have a recidivism rate of 35.5 percent. Until states start using their geriatric release programs more often and study the effects, it's hard to know whether geriatric release would save money overall or just in corrections budgets. But it's important to remember that being as punitive as we are in the U.S. costs real money.
