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Aging Prisoners

Analysis April 18
Officials Failed to Act When COVID Hit Prisons. A New Study Shows the Deadly Cost.
People in prison died at 3.4 times the rate of the free population, with the oldest hit hardest. New data holds lessons for preventing future deaths.
By , and
People at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, New York, in 2016.
Life Inside April 14, 2020
“Covid Breached the Wall and Killed A Man Yesterday”
Trying to stay alive in Sing Sing.
By Dino Caroselli, as told to
Coronavirus March 19, 2020
This Chart Shows Why The Prison Population Is So Vulnerable to COVID-19
Those 55 and older are a growing share of the people in state prisons. They’re also the most at risk as coronavirus spreads.
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Photographs and letters shared between Kimberly Heraldez and her father, Kevin Zeich, while he was in prison.
Feature March 7, 2018
Old, Sick and Dying in Shackles
“Compassionate release” has bipartisan support as a way to reduce the federal prison population and save taxpayer money. New data shows that it’s rarely used.
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Aging inmates eat lunch in the dining hall at Devens federal prison in Massachusetts in 2015.
Quiz May 19, 2016
Are Older People Getting Harsher Sentences? Take Our Quiz to Find Out.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics takes a close look at our aging state prison population.
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SAN LUIS OBISPO, CA - DECEMBER 19: (Editorial Use Only) Frank Fuller, age 66, walks back to his prison cell after taking medication at California Men’s Colony prison on December 19, 2013 in San Luis Obispo, California. Fuller is helped through his daily life by the Gold Coats program, a volunteer care program where healthy prisoners care for elderly prisoners who either need general assistance with mobility and every day life or who also struggle with Alzheimer’s and dementia. The program, the first of it’s kind in the country, has existed for approximately 25 years. Fuller is serving a 35-years-to-life sentence; he has been incarcerated since 1990. He has been in the Gold Coats program for over six years. He says he is serving time for the murder of his third wife, who he says he shot with a rifle in a drunken rage after learning she had been having an affair with another man. He has been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from serving five years in the Navy in the Vietnam War; he also has Hepatitis C. Fuller, who took shrapnel in his legs from a mortar round, says he held many different positions while fighting in Vietnam, including being a machine gunner; he says he still suffers occasional flash backs. He says has served one other sentence for murdering a man with a .45 caliber gun in a fight. Between Vietnam and prison, he says he worked in the oil fields and in manufacturing. (Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images)
News August 27, 2015
When Prisons Need to Be More Like Nursing Homes
Finding new ways to treat the growing pool of older, ailing inmates.
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Justice Lab August 24, 2015
Do You Age Faster in Prison?
Science tries to catch up with the problem of ‘accelerated aging.’
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