Elderly Inmates On The Rise

As a criminal defense lawyer, I often visit my clients in custody. I am always surprised to see so many elderly people incarcerated. It seemed to me that the number of elderly people who were imprisoned was on the rise. A recent study for the Human Right Watch confirmed my suspicions. They discovered that the number of incarcerated prisoners 65 years of age or older increased 94 times the rate of the overall prison population between 2007 and 2010.

This is going to become a significant burden on our prisons as elderly prisoners often have numerous physical difficulties, such as walking to the lunch room, climbing stairs, getting to the bunk bed in their cell, suffer from mental deterioration as well as physical illness.

The medical costs for older prisoners three to nine times as higher than for younger prisoners. It will interesting to see how the prison are going to deal with this as their budgets are barely solvent, the facilities are geared toward younger inmates. Human rights violations will simply become more and more difficult for the prisons to avoid. Personal Injury attorneys and Humans Rights Law Firms could have a time with this, though it may be difficult to convince juries to award much damages.

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