Word: prison
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Other states are following Pennsylvania's lead in building penal facilities for the aged. But just how much sense does it make for society to keep these mostly nonviolent, broken old men incarcerated? With the U.S. prison population soaring (to a record 1.8 million last year), Florida and California are being forced to release violent felons early because of court orders to reduce prison overcrowding. Should these people go free while harmless wheelchair-bound geriatrics stay locked up? Statistically, the risk of recidivism drops significantly with age. "To keep some of these folks in prison for the length of time...
...plight of aging inmates has its ironies. In prison they have virtually unlimited access to medical care, while ailing seniors who have walked the straight and narrow often do without because they can't afford soaring health-care costs. What's more, inmates who have spent 30 or 40 years in prison frequently have no family members to care for them. Most states have limited halfway-housing programs for relatively healthy elderly ex-cons, but they can accommodate just a fraction of those in need. "We are constantly faced with low-risk, high-cost prisoners who should be moved into...
...lifers whose crimes were in the distant past, a surprising 45% of inmates 50 and older have been arrested within the past two years. These older felons, moreover, tend to be locked up for more serious crimes, such as rape, murder and child molestation. Yet they're sharing prison space with people like Bedarka, who can't remember what he ate for breakfast but can clearly recall his defense against that murder charge three decades ago. "He threatened me," Bedarka says. "It was either him or me." Now, it's just...
...would turn the Mir space station into a prison in which we would place criminals who are convicted of crimes against humanity. Their sentence is not only isolation in space, but they would be forced to look down on earth to see how interdependent humans are on each other." --William Shatner, actor, Star Trek...
...herself to a jail life and her 12-year-old daughter to Los Angeles' foster-care system. Young Astrid gets off to a shaky start at the home of a born-again Christian who shoots her in a fit of righteous jealousy. She survives that, though, as well as prison notes from her mother, which include sentiments like this: "Sometimes I wish you were dead, so I would know you were safe." Fitch tends to get lost in the lyricism of her prose, but there are satisfying moments of clarity in this ambitious debut novel...