our facility better accommodates older offenders
he said. With everything under one roof you don't have to go outside as much.
Banks added that the older population seems calmer.
However, elder inmates also present special challenges to Hocking Correctional. For some inmates at Hocking Correctional Facility, 60 minutes of wheelchair aerobics is all the exercise they'll get in a week. This is in part because the average inmate age is 65.
According to yearly reports released by the U.S. Department of Justice, the number of convicts over 55 has been increasing for the past decade, jumping from 42,300 to 73,000 between 2000 and 2007.
Hocking Correctional has seen this trend firsthand. Activities like wheelchair aerobics and euchre are more popular than basketball because of the prison's older population, Warden Ed Banks explained.
By design
our facility better accommodates older offenders
he said. With everything under one roof
you don't have to go outside as much.
Banks added that the older population seems calmer.
However, elder inmates also present special challenges to Hocking Correctional.
The daily cost per inmate is $81.28, compared to $45.65 at nearby Chillicothe Correctional Institution, where administrative assistant Leta Pritchard estimated the average inmate to be in the early 40s. There are also more round trips to medical facilities at Hocking Correctional, Banks said.
The Southeastern Ohio Regional Jail in Nelsonville also houses older offenders, though not on the same scale as Hocking Correctional. Jail Warden Jeremy Tolson said that he also has seen older inmates take more trips to the hospital than younger inmates.
With regard to relations between older and younger inmates, Tolson said, It's kind of the norm for other prisoners to respect their elders.
However, there isn't always peace between generations.
Alex Friedmann is the associate editor for Prison Legal News, a monthly magazine that covers prisoner rights. He said that there are age conflicts between inmates all the time that don't make it into the news, most of which arise from putting two inmates of different ages in the same cell.
He added that much of these of conflicts could be solved if society were not so punitive.
We're making people serve out their entire service when they're no danger to society
because they're in wheelchairs
Friedmann said.
Medical needs are also a concern for many elderly inmates. Christine Link, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio affiliate office, said prisoner health care is mediocre at best.
We would not put our parents in a nursing home with the quality of health care provided by most prisons
she said.
Despite more medical needs, older inmates still have a variety of re-entry programs available to them at Hocking Correctional, all based on seven dynamic risk factors, which are: employment, marital/family, social interaction, substance abuse, community functioning, emotional orientation and attitude.
However, not all inmates commit to re-entry. Kevin Bryan, the prison unit manager, said, You can have a gauntlet of programs available
but it's their decision to participate. Some choose to not take part.
Bryan said that one possible reason for non-participation is that some of the older inmates' immediate families are too old to care for them.
