CELLBLOCK SENIORS

They Have Grown Old And Frail In Prison.

Must They Still Be Locked Up?

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 to no one.

The number of elderly men in Bedarka's situation is increasing
dramatically. With three-strikes laws becoming common and some states
abolishing parole altogether, the ranks of these 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 hand-guns 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 the Martians. The demand for beds is so great that the prison
plans a $23 million expansion that will triple capacity.

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 we do is purely punitive serves no
purpose to society," argues William DiMascio, executive director of the
Pennsylvania Prison Society.

The plight of aging inmates has its ironies.

In prison, they have virtually unlimited access to Medicare, while ailing
seniors who have walked the straight and narrow often do without because
they can't afford soaring healthcare 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 proper for relatively healthy elderly ex-cons, but they can
accommodate just a fraction of those in need. "We are constantly faced with
high-cost prisoners who should be moved into some kind of supervised
release," says Jonathan Turley, founder of George Washington University's
Project for Older Prisoners, known as POPS. "But there is no infrastructure
in most states to accept large numbers of released older prisoners."

POPS, an innovative program that represents elderly inmates at their parole
hearings and helps find a place in the community for nonviolent geriatric
inmates, has helped 200 prisoners 55 and over win parole.

Half were released to the custody of relatives.

Others were accepted into halfway-house programs and church-run, low-cost
apartments. Turley argues that states could reap tremendous savings by
diverting just a fraction of corrections' budgets into post-release housing
alternatives.

No one is advocating wholesale amnesty for inmates solely because of
advancing age. Though many geriatric inmates are 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 him.