The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

Their medical costs are eating up an already strapped Michigan budget, preventing the state from spending on schools and other needs. Health care for Michigan prisoners has jumped 50 percent in six years, from $120 million to $181 million.

But the financial hemorrhaging is avoidable, say criminologists. They said many geriatric jailbirds can be released from prison without posing a threat to society.

Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University who has worked with elderly prisoners, said study after study has shown that age is the best criteria to determine whether parolees will return to crime. A federal Justice Department report found in 1990 that 2 percent of men paroled after age 55 return to prison. For men ages 18-24, the figure was 22 percent.

"You're facing a serious crisis," Turley said. "Most states will hit a demographic wall, and they're not prepared."

Despite the soaring costs of locking up the elderly, the state has little inclination to release them.

And victims' advocates said convicted felons like Richmond, who sexually assaulted a woman in 1990, don't deserve a single day of freedom.

"If they did something horrendous to my family, I wouldn't want them out," said Gail Beasley, who began a Detroit bereavement group in 1989 after her brother was murdered. "They have to be accountable for their actions."

Richmond, a retired Air Force flight engineer with a white buzz cut, was sentenced to eight to 30 years. He became eligible for parole in 1998 but has been turned down every year.

And so he spends most of his time in his dormitory-like room, sleeping and watching soap operas on his black-and-white TV. He takes a dozen medications and shuffles about with a walker.

"There is nothing I could do to hurt someone," he said.
But few people were listening.

'It's the same as dying'

The geriatric unit at Lakeland Correctional offers a glimpse into the future of Michigan prisons. It looks like an old folks' home surrounded by uniformed guards and concertina wire.

It has rooms instead of cells, beds instead of bunks, ramps instead of steps. The doors have automatic-opening buttons, and the showers have seats. Handrails snake around the florescent-lit hallways.

The H-shaped unit, which has medical facilities in the middle, has 96 male prisoners who were assigned there because of poor health. The most seriously ill are held at a prison hospital in Jackson.

The unit sits inside the larger prison, a former mental health facility surrounded by a barren, frozen landscape evocative of the community's name. It doesn't feel like prison so much as a hospice, said inmate Al Albertson. "It's the same as dying," he said. "It's capital punishment in a non-capital-punishment state."

Albertson, 74, who has been locked up 40 years for killing a bar owner, was whisked by ambulance from the facility in May after a heart attack. As Albertson spoke last week, he stood outside a rec room where a man was playing solitaire and another assembling a thousand-piece puzzle. A stationary bike went unused.

Each week, the unit has bingo, wheelchair aerobics and handicraft classes, where men knit and crochet. Lines for medication form at 8 a.m., noon, and 4-8 p.m. When inmate Eli Rossell looks in the mirror, he sees a stranger who is wrinkled and plain worn out.

Aches and pains make it difficult for the onetime college football player to move about. Visitors stopped coming a long time ago.

"I know my life is over," he said. "My family and friends are either dead or so old they're not the people I used to know."

Rossell, 82, who has served 34 years for killing a woman, found the geriatric unit so gloomy and death-scented that he moved back into the more dangerous larger prison several years ago.

"Most people talked as if they had one foot in the grave," he said.

Tough parole board

The Michigan Parole Board became one of the toughest in the nation during the 1990s, said criminologists.

Then-Gov. John Engler pushed for members who took a dim view of rehabilitation.

In 1992, the board required inmates with life sentences to serve 15 years before becoming eligible for parole and to wait five years for each subsequent review.

In 1998, the state passed a law requiring inmates to serve at least their minimum sentences.

Neither Gov. Jennifer Granholm or Corrections Director Pat Caruso, who appoints the parole board, has shown much interest in softening Engler's stance.

"I expect the parole board to be tough," Caruso said. "That's their job." "They're responsible to a wide range of groups, from taxpayers to the public, the community, the victims, the prisoners they consider for parole, all of us."

Virginia, North Carolina and Maryland have released elderly inmates through a program founded by Turley, the law professor. Law school students cull inmates' records to find the best candidates for release based on age, crime, behavior in prison and other factors.

The students then argue the cases in front of the parole board. They've won the release of 100 inmates, and none has returned to prison.

In Michigan, the state's toughness with inmates comes with a price. The number of Michigan prisoners older than 60 has risen from 960 in 1999 to 1,557 this year. The overall population increased 11 percent during that time.

Inmates over age 50 account for 13 percent of the prison population. At the geriatric unit, the oldest inmate is 85. Some have been in prison since the Korean War.

It's a bald battalion armed with bifocals and hearing aides, propelled by a battery of canes and walkers. So many residents wield wheelchairs that few chairs are necessary in the cafeteria.

Wobbly fingers prevent the buttoning of shirts. Some, baby-like, need to have their food chopped up. They're helped by younger prisoners who work as aides.

"It leaves a lot of stroke victims dealing with shoestrings and buttons," said Doc McBee, 68, who has served 35 years for murder.

Financial costs soar

Inmate Joe Bennett has the face of an aging leprechaun but, unlike the mischievous elves of Irish folklore, his capture didn't net anyone a crock of gold. Instead, it's costing the state one.

He takes 10 medications twice a day for arthritis, a hernia, poor breathing, swollen legs and high blood pressure.

The annual cost of jailing an elderly inmate is three times higher than a younger one, $69,000 vs. $22,000, according to the National Center of Institutions and Alternatives, a Baltimore group that studies alternatives to prison. If the inmates were released, they could be eligible for Medicare or Medicaid, transferring the financial responsibility from the state to the federal government.

Bennett, 79, who is serving up to 40 years for sexually abusing a girl, keeps his legs elevated by sticking books and clothes under his mattress. Until, that is, he has to urinate, half a dozen times a night.

"What good can come of holding an 80-year-old in prison?" he asked. "Most aren't able to tie our own shoes."

It's not just an old con's lament. His ailments aren't the most expensive for the state to treat.

The prison's health roll call would challenge any nursing home's: diabetes, epilepsy, cancer, amputations, HIV, Parkinson's, hepatitis C, Lou Gehrig's disease, kidney and liver failure.

"Our ailments?" said inmate George Hall. "Pick a card."

Hall, 70, once worked at the geriatric unit as an aide. Now he's a resident. Like most of the inmates, he dreams of walking away from prison one day. He imagines living in a simple house in the country, being able to fetch cold milk from his refrigerator in the middle of the night.

But Hall knows the odds are against him. The convicted murderer, who has been in prison for 30 years, was passed over for parole last year. His next chance is 2009.

"Longevity 101 will tell you I can't do many of those," he said on his birthday.

Hall said he no longer poses a threat to anyone, but that's not why he's still in prison, serving a slow death sentence.

"The real reason is punishment," he said. "Only my death will pay the debt. Society wants my life and nothing is going to change that."
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051228/METRO/512280332