Word: prison
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Picture an 86-year-old man clutching a walker as he shuffles down a prison hallway. Not exactly the usual image of a dangerous killer locked up for the good of society. Chances are, it's not what the judge envisioned either when he sentenced John Bedarka, a Pennsylvania coal miner, to life without parole for shooting his wife's lover to death 30 years ago. But Bedarka is still in prison at Laurel Highlands correctional institution in Somerset, Pa., in frail health, severely depressed and a threat...
...aging, sickly inmates will only keep growing--as will the cost to taxpayers. Because elderly people require more medical care, it costs nearly three times as much to incarcerate them, or about $65,000 a year per inmate. "Society has to take a real good look at this aging prison population and what's going to happen to them," says Fredric Rosemeyer, superintendent of Laurel Highlands, one of a new crop of prisons with geriatric wings equipped with oxygen generators and wheelchairs instead of handcuffs and stun guns...
About 70 miles east of Pittsburgh, Laurel Highlands is a prison and a nursing home rolled into one for people like Bedarka. For the sickest of the sick, there is the 85-bed long-term-care unit, staffed by 48 nurses around the clock. In a dayroom, half a dozen elderly men gaze at an ancient TV, mesmerized by Judge Judy. Amputees pushing manually operated wheelchairs queue up at the medication counter, where a cheery nurse dispenses pills for diabetes, heart disease and stroke. Nearby, a delusional man rants that State Road 31 is a barrier protecting him from...
...violence of this female rebellion, by the barrage of mockery, interruptions and demands the suffragists hurled and, later, by the sight of viragoes in silk petticoats, matrons with hammers, ladies with stones in their kid gloves, mothers and mill girls unbowed before the forces of judges, policemen and prison wardens. Many suffragists in Britain and the U.S. argued that the Pankhursts' violence--arson, window smashing, picture slashing and hunger strikes--was counterproductive to the cause and fueled misogynistic views of female hysteria. Though the question remains open, the historical record shows shameless government procrastination, broken pledges and obstruction long before...
...began public life, though, Milk was a preposterous figure--an "avowed homosexual," in the embarrassed language of the time, who was running for office. In the 1970s, many psychiatrists still called homosexuality a mental illness. In one entirely routine case, the Supreme Court refused in 1978 to overturn the prison sentence of a man convicted solely of having sex with another consenting man. A year before, it had let stand the firing of a stellar Tacoma, Wash., teacher who made the mistake of telling the truth when his principal asked if he was homosexual. No real national gay organization existed...